This article explains why rates of sexual assault remain high on college campuses. Data are from a study of college life at a large midwestern university involving nine months of ethnographic observation of a women's floor in a "party dorm," in-depth interviews with 42 of the floor residents, and 16 group interviews with other students. We show that sexual assault is a predictable outcome of a synergistic intersection of processes operating at individual, organizational, and interactional levels. Some processes are explicitly gendered, while others appear to be gender neutral. We discuss student homogeneity, expectations that partiers drink heavily and trust their party-mates, and residential arrangements. We explain how these factors intersect with more obviously gendered processes such as gender differences in sexual agendas, fraternity control of parties, and expectations that women be nice and defer to men. We show that partying produces fun as well as sexual assault, generating student resistance to criticizing the party scene or men's behavior in it. We conclude with implications for policy.

Collegiate hookup culture advances ideas of male sexuality as relentless and indiscriminate but disrupts beliefs about women-that they should avoid casual sex encase sexual desires in romantic motives and strive for committed relationshipsthus putting women at risk of being sexually stigmatized. Although research has examined how college women negotiate competing expectations (Hamilton and Armstrong 2009;Wilkins and Dalessandro 2013), little research has examined how collegiate sexual culture and gender beliefs create dilemmas for men as well (for an exception, see Wilkins 2012). In this article, I draw on in-depth and focus group interview data with college students to investigate the sexual and romantic experiences of a group of class-and race-privileged fraternity men.While demonstrations of heterosexual mastery and the domination of women are key to peer belonging and masculine status among these men, enacting the group's construction of sexualized masculinity comes with costs to individuals. Men have to calibrate their personal preferences and practices with the group's competitive and

Although sexual assault has long been recognized as a problem among college students, little attention has been paid to why first-year women are the most likely to be assaulted. In this article the author drew on two studies of college students to analyze peer culture and the organization of gender and sexuality within a college party scene. Within this scene, fraternity men's masculine identities and peer status were linked to their ability to hook up with women. However, strong sexual double standards stigmatized many sexually active women, reducing their appeal as sexual partners. In contrast, men saw first-year women were seen as "fresh," "clean," and especially alluring. The organization of campus life at the beginning of the year also made these women particularly available.

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Studies of collegiate party and hookup culture tend to overlook variation along social class and racial/ethnic lines. Drawing on interview data at a "party school" in the Midwest, I examine the meanings and practices of drinking and casual sex for a group of class and race-diverse fraternity men. While more privileged men draw on ideas of age and gender to construct college as a time to let loose, indulge, and explore, men from disadvantaged backgrounds express greater ambivalence toward partying. For these men, partying presents both opportunities and dilemmas and taps into tensions inherent in being upwardly mobile college men. For some, symbolic abstention from extreme party behavior addresses some of these tensions and validates their place on campus. Men's talk of collegiate partying reveals the dynamic and relational construction of intersectional identities on campus.