Boink, page 19
Even more, with a majority of the student columnists and editors involved in the creation of the sexually related content being female, gender politics also have influenced the creation and direction of the columns and magazines in the contemporary campus media. Supporters point to the columns, mostly written by female undergraduates, as beacons of female empowerment, in enabling women a public forum to discuss their sexual selves in an open and frank manner that has traditionally been frowned upon or seen in purely male terms. Issues related to feminine strength and sexual openness, often linked by the female student writers and editors with third-wave feminism, are embedded directly and contextually in many of their related writings and publications, owing to past incidents as varied as the Title IX rules granting women equal rights with men in higher education athletics, the rising divorce rate, and increasing female enrollment in colleges and universities nationwide.
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The threats and official action related to the funding, freedom, and distribution of the student publications printing sexually-explicit fare show how far removed the older generation and educational heads have become from the students.
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Meanwhile, simply from a journalistic perspective, the printing of sexually related content is seen, if nothing else, as a way to better acquaint student publications today with the true passions and thought processes of their core audience. “So much stuff that’s published in a college paper is super dull,” said Michael Coleman, the former editor in chief of The Daily Californian who approved the first “Sex on Tuesday” column. “You know, the story of what goes into a city council meeting or how the water polo team did last night. So, I liked the idea that a sex column would be a little provocative on purpose, to really get at the heart of what students actually talked about and cared about.”
As Coleman and other student journalists have pointed out, whether administrators like it or not, sex is at the heart of student thought and action. It has been a reality of higher education since the first public university admitted women in 1855 and most certainly since the first co-educational dormitory in the U.S. was constructed in 1969. The columns are right to recognize sex’s place of significance in the current collegiate landscape and should be applauded for providing education, reflection, debate, and just-plain entertaining insight into its possible positive and negative consequences.
In the end, the passionate tenor of Thames’s response illustrates the columns’ value, as no other single entity in the post-millennial college journalism universe continues to stir so much simultaneous interest and admonishment, fame and notoriety, fear and fervent support. They are provoking thought, emotional responses, drawn-out debate, and internal examination. In these respects, sex and the columns that discuss it don’t exemplify what’s wrong with college today—they embody what college is all about.
Christopher Anderson, Boink
