Posted on 09/23/2004 11:08:25 AM PDT by Area Freeper
"Roxy Sass," the sex columnist at the Stanford Daily, advises "tragically repressed" Stanford University students to stash sexual aids in their "trusty toy box."
The Daily Cal's popular "Sex on Tuesday" column welcomed University of California, Berkeley students back to school with frank talk about morning-after manners and the etiquette of the "half-night stand" - sneaking out before the sun and the bed owner rise.
And Yvonne K. Fulbright, the 29-year-old doctoral student who writes the "Sexpert Tells All" column for New York University's Washington Square News, is so well-known that she was invited to speak at freshman orientation.
From California campuses to the Ivy League and Big Ten universities in the nation's heartland, student sex columnists - nearly all of them young women - are spicing up college newspapers and pushing the boundaries between entertaining and advising.
For a generation exposed to TV shows like HBO's saucy "Sex and the City," the columns are must-reads.
"It's a lot of advice on technique and pleasure," said Sonia Chen, 22, a fifth-year student at Cal who has been reading "Sex on Tuesday" since she was a freshman. "It's like anonymous sex advice. You don't have to ask your friends questions because it's in the campus paper."
But others, including parents and alumni, are aghast at the frank and sometimes explicit nature of the columns, which discuss everything from orgasm to tantric sex to G-spots - and that's just for starters. Some adults have expressed concern about the soundness of the advice, but many students say they find the columns both entertaining and informative.
Some columns are humorous essays based on interviews with students and the writer's personal experience, while others follow a question-and-answer format. While critics worry that the columns reinforce stereotypes that college students are promiscuous, others argue that the trend toward "abstinence-only" campaigns in high schools means that many students arrive on campus starved for information because they've had little to no sex education.
At Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., the Lumberjack newspaper's "Sexually Speaking" column has been written for five years by Melinda Myers, a 43-year-old psychology professor who teaches courses on human sexuality. She is the only non-student columnist at the paper.
"College students are absolutely having sex, but they don't know the first thing about it," said Myers. "Last semester, a female student in one of my courses asked if it was true that drinking Windex after sex meant you would not get pregnant."
There's no accurate tally of how many campus newspapers run sex columns: many, including The Spartan Daily at San Jose State and The Santa Clara at Santa Clara University, do not have them.
And as the fall semester gets under way, some college papers are facing criticism both on and off campus.
The debut sex column in The Spectrum at North Dakota State University caused a furor among adults in the surrounding Fargo community. The just-launched column by "Allison Moorhead," the pseudonym for the female writer, was barely noted by the school's 12,000 students. But the column about oral sex outraged the larger campus community, and many adults bombarded the paper's editor with angry phone calls.
"I'm scared every time the phone rings," said Matthew Perine, the Spectrum's editor, who says he is torn over whether to tone the column down or allow a local alternative paper to run it unedited instead.
Though the various columns invariably offend some people, most university administrators steer clear of regulating the editorial content of student-run publications. So far, no one at North Dakota State has pressured the Spectrum to drop the column, and other staffers have leapt to its defense.
But critics, including some campus health professionals, warn that the freewheeling content of the sex columns could unintentionally increase pressure on students to engage in behavior for which they are not emotionally prepared.
"Most of the sex columns are written by student journalists or columnists who don't have, other than their own dating experience, any clinical training in sex education," said Tom Rolnicki, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Associated College Press, a national membership organization for college student media, who said that the columns are well-read in part because of their salaciousness. "There is some shock value involved."
Others warn that the columns are overwhelmingly written from a heterosexual perspective, with little regard to gay students or students who choose not to be sexually active.
The Daily Cal's "Sex on Tuesday" column first appeared in January 1997, making it the first campus newspaper to have a sex column in the nation. This semester it is written by Sari Eitches, a 21-year-old pre-med student who plans to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology.
"I want to keep it entertaining, because that's the best way to get information across," said Eitches, who writes about half-night stands as well as practical advice, like informing readers that emergency contraception is available on campus. "There is so much misinformation about sexuality and sexual health out there."
The notion that the university is bastion of free love and promiscuity is a total lie. I couldn't get a girlfriend in univeristy, not because I was shy, but because every single woman I met already had a boyfriend. And when I got to grad school, they were all married. They literaly got married before they were old enough to drink. Did they serve tang instead of champagne at the reception?
An "if you drink Windex after sex you won't get pregnant" ping.
I'm going to try to remember all those double-etendres the next time I'm adding keywords to a Mark Morford posting.
Hell, I'm 44
and I wouldn't be able
to write a helpful
bumper sticker on
sex, let alone pass along
an advice column . . .
I didn't say that the place was a bastion of free love.
I said that the message sent out was 'x' where 'x' is defined by the philosophies espoused by those in control of the campus.
Please reread it again.
Actually using any of them in a Keyword search will no doubt retrieve one of his columns. Too bad Sari's a chick. Seems like she could have found a soulmate.
The double standards are legend. The Womyn's Center at my undergrad institution was responsible for instituing a sexual harrassment code where looking at someone for a prolonged period of time could get you expelled. Meanwhile, they also sponsored Sex Fairs where condoms were handed out for free.
Well, some people will always be idiots no matter how much advice you dole out to them.
Parents and churches, though, make a huge mistake when they try to punt the issue by telling kids sex is always dirty, nasty, sinful or leave them with that impression by refusing to ever talk about it. That works fine up until puberty, then it just isn't plausible to the rational mind that God gave us such an immense drive for something that is intrinsically sinful.
Then when the dam finally breaks, parents and churches lose all credibility for convincing young people to control their sex drives.
I find that if you just smile at them and say something like "Whatever you say jiggles," they usually turn bright red and are too infuriated to respond. Works for me.
LOL!!
I'd get mugged for that.
Most of the female population around this area is taller than I.
BTW, you really need to click on the link in post 18.
Already did..
She sounds like someone I once knew.
And that makes it even worse to read since I have this friend's voice in mind while reading that.
*wincing*
Only thing is, my friend wasn't serious about that subject, she merely deadpanned such statements and waited for the reaction.
LOL!
I'm gonna get maced!
I am SO gonna get maced!
The ABCs of how to be a soulless slut from someone who already is.
True, but it does make things clearer.
Women often use men they don't really like as "placeholders" until Mr. Right comes along. And many times these placeholders aren't even real - she's just testing to see if you are interested enough (or man enough) to overcome the potential obstacle.
Next time one tries the "I have a boyfriend" line, reply, "Good, he can make us breakfast tomorrow morning." It's surprising how often the "boyfriend" turns out not to really exist after all. ;)
You got me. I can't be clever after the earlier email I received and passed on. My brain is still in a fog with terrible mental images of that man at the beach.
Yeah, that's it. These kids today don't ever hear about sex from tv or music or movies or songs or the internet or their friends. They're just totally naive on these things.
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