College Sex Everywhere
The other day I ran into a professor from Auburn University whom I personally know very well. By chance, we started talking about the recent live sex demonstration in Northwestern University and it was obvious to me that she was absolutely horrified by the thought. She told me she read it in the Chronicle of Higher Education and suggested to me some things from there. When I got home and started browsing through, I saw this.
To summarize (these all happened within four days of each other):
-A student in UMass made the claim in her column that drunk flirtatious women who dress scandalously in a party should take responsibility if she was raped.
-A Northwestern professor allowed a live sex-toy demonstration in class to show female orgasm is real.
-A basketball player in BYU was dismissed from the team for having pre-marital sex (violating the BYU honor code).
-A How to Better Masturbate Guide was distributed by Skidmore College’s Center for Sex and Gender Relations.
As you can imagine, there are many outcries and discussions going on related to all these topics. What I find intriguing is the involvement of the college institutions and their approaches.
On one end, we have masturbation guides floating around and on the other, a dismissal for pre-marital sex.
So how involved should the academic institutions have over their students’ sex lives? Their goal is to educate and inspire young minds, and how much involvement does that mean in terms of something like sex? I think it’s safe to say that most universities do not really want a prominent sex culture to exist among its student body, but the reality is that many do.* So what should the institutions do?
The Northwestern demonstration case is particularly interesting. Though it received mostly positive feedback from those in the classroom, it created protests from angry “moralists” who want to protect the integrity of a university. Is having a live sex demonstration “ethically bad?” And why so? What is it exactly that makes an optional demonstration sex bad when it is for education purposes?
I think this is a great time for the students and administrations in universities to talk about sex.
*This reminded me of a quote from a famous Cal president Clark Kerr: “The three purposes of the University? To provide sex for the students, sports for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.” (I believe he was joking)
