Duke. Dana. King. Bauman. Hege Library. Frank. Academic buildings or hook-up hot spots? Apparently both.A recent survey given to a sample of 100 Guilford students disclosed details about Guilford’s bizarre hook-up culture, from the best and worst places to do it to the politics that tend to arise in a tiny school where competition and gossip are rampant.

It’s no secret that a common complaint among students is that Guilford’s small size makes potential hook-up options limited. But at just under 1,500 traditional students, there have to be some other factors figuring into this claim. One reason may be that the infamous athlete-non-athlete divide exacerbates the problem.

“There are enough people here that you don’t have to stay within your social circle, but people party within their own groups, so they tend to date or hook up within their own groups, too,” said junior Julia Hohn. “It gets incestuous.”

Despite this tendency, some students have recognized the value of branching out to people they meet in classes or extracurricular activities that may not be in the same social groups.

“I think that if people make an effort to immerse themselves in different cultures within Guilford in terms of athletes and non-athletes, they’ll find they have more dating options,” said junior Alina Saez.

It may be the feeling that options are limited that led to an interesting phenomenon that senior Ada Stephens has witnessed over her years at Guilford. “Freshmen always end up hooking up with seniors and upperclassman. It’s like fresh meat,” said Stephens.

Another contributing factor may be that the tight-knit community at Guilford means that if you go out to a party and hook up, you run the risk of being a hot topic in half the school’s morning recaps of the night before. In fact, 71 percent of the surveyed students expressed a lack of confidence about being able to keep hook-ups under wraps at Guilford.

“The lack of privacy is the worst part of hook-up culture at Guilford- the fact that everyone knows the morning after you’ve hooked up with someone,” said junior Emma Tessler.

In terms of the traveling speed of gossip, student opinions were nearly evenly divided, with one-third of the survey takers claiming that hook-up gossip travels faster at Guilford than in high school, one-third believing the opposite, and the rest saying that gossip in high school travels at the same speed as it does at Guilford.

The survey responses revealed that while both guys and girls can easily develop reputations when they hook up a lot, girls are more likely to be subject to negative labels like “slut,” “easy,” or “prude.”

Students seemed to agree that hook-ups at Guilford tend to be pre-calculated, in that you have to think about the repercussions of a hook-up more so than at large universities. Factors like gossip, hurt feelings and awkward encounters are all considerations students may have to grapple with.

“If things go badly, you can’t avoid the person,” said Tessler. “You’ll see them everywhere and it makes for a lot of awkward situations.”

These factors may be the reasoning behind the fact that people at Guilford tend to opt out of random hook-ups in favor of pursuing a specific “target”.

“At Guilford, there are two types of people when it comes to hooking up,” said sophomore Arthur Wood. “One is the hustler and the other is the floater. The hustler definitely has targets and goes after their ‘hustle,’ or the person they want to go after. For the floater, stuff just happens sometimes and alcohol is usually involved.”

As far as locations go, the woods, the lake and the meadows topped the charts for the most popular non-residence-hall hook-up spots. Appealing as these outdoor spots may seem, surveyed students warned that poison ivy is everywhere this time of year. (If you thought keeping a hook-up a secret was hard before, imagine how hard it might be if you and your special friend both ended up covered in red itchy blotches.)

Other reported hook-up spots ranged from various parking lots to less obvious locations, including the observatory in Frank, the mail room, the football field, and the bathrooms of Bauman. One popular location for late night “study breaks” in the past has been the viewing rooms in the basement of the library, though students should be aware that there are now cameras in those rooms.

According to the surveys, almost no building or open space on campus is off-limits when it comes to hooking up.

“I did it in Dana in the lobby and it was scary,” said Stephens, referring to the ghosts that reportedly haunt that building.

While hooking up is a perfectly natural way to have fun and meet new people in college, precautions should always be taken. Students need to remember that swine flu is present on campus and can be easily transferred through swapping saliva. According to the health center, 19 students have been treated for H1N1 so far this year, although not all of the cases have been officially confirmed at the hospital.

STDs are also something to watch out for. According to the health center, chlamydia is the most common STD on Guilford’s campus. As always, it’s important to remember that using protection and having conversations with your partner about sexual histories are the best way to avoid contracting STDs. Happy hunting!