We're college kids.
We're wondering about our futures and what we're doing this weekend. We're sleeping in class and staying up all night. We're searching for love and sex. That's right, I said sex.
You can't say that you and your friends aren't talking about the sex, or the lack of sex, that you're having. Not just sex, but dating, kissing, touching and anything else that you might be doing with a partner. Maybe you're talking about some things that you're doing without a partner. Single, dating, engaged, married, straight, gay or uncertain, you're talking about sex.
So if we're all talking about sex, then why isn't our newspaper talking about sex? It's supposed to be the voice of the students, isn't it?
Before you go jumping to any conclusions, hear me out. Sex in the student newspaper isn't such a crazy idea. In fact, it's going on all over the country. Student newspapers from the Yale Daily News on the East Coast to UCLA's Daily Californian on the West Coast and everywhere in between have been running sex and relationship columns on a regular basis for years now.
Natalie Krinsky was one of the earliest and most famous student sex columnists. She was chosen to write for the Yale Daily News because of her exceptional writing skills and impeccable sense of humor, according to a 2002 New York Times article.
Krinsky's columns were well research and incredibly factual, yet she maintained the voice of a college coed. Her peers responded very favorably. Her column about oral sex recorded over 250,000 hits on the Yale Daily News Web site, according to USA Today.
Other newspapers experience the same spike in readership for their sex and relationship columns as well. The Daily Californian at University of California, Berkley runs their column, "Sex on Tuesdays," every week. Christine Borden, who wrote the column from January to December of 2007, said that an average of 10,000 copies of the paper are picked up on Tuesdays. On the campus of only 30,000 students, this is more copies than any other day of the week.
Sex and relationship columns can take on a wide variety of topics. On the tame end of things, Krinsky compared choosing a boyfriend at Yale to choosing classes at Yale. The other end of the spectrum includes columns on oral sex, masturbation and suggestions to spice up your sex life. These are the things that we're talking about, right?
This isn't all fun and games though. Columns like this need to be well researched, just like any other piece in a newspaper. USA Today reported that some oppose such columns because they aren't educating students accurately. Others simply feel that a college newspaper isn't the place for a column with this type of content.
"There is often some form of hate e-mail, but more often than not, students enjoy the column," said Borden about her column.
How does this fit into our Ball State Daily News, our little state school, our Midwestern town?
Columns like this are traditionally written and read by women. Ball State's undergraduate enrollment was 51.9 percent women during the 2006-2007 academic year, according to the Ball State University Online Fact Book. So give us a break, there's a few hundred more of us estrogen-driven creatures roaming around here, let us have our own "Sex and the City"-esque column.
A creative name is another prerequisite for a good sex column. "Sex and the (Elm) City" from the Yale Daily News is cute, and "Cornellingus" from, you guessed it, The Cornell Daily Sun, wins the dirty, yet clever, award when it comes to column names. We go to Ball State, you can't say that you've never heard a dirty joke about that.
Let's say that the Daily News starts running their own "Insert funny name here" column next week. We both know that you're going to read it. We both know that you're going to talk to your friends about it. We both know that sex sells.
Mia Trimboli is a junior public relations major and writes 'Let's talk about...' for the Daily News. His views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper.
Write to Mia at mstrimboli@bsu.edu
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