March 1, 2010, 10:00 AM ET

Please Tell the Dean About Your Sex Life

Last month the Yale Daily News ran a five-part series on students' sex lives, using pie charts and bar graphs to depict such things as the frequency of couplings (and soloings) on the campus. Now the Yale College dean's office is inviting students to submit anonymous essays about their campus sexual experiences for a new online collection called "sex@Yale," the student newspaper reports.

Melanie Boyd, director of undergraduate studies in women’s gender and sexuality studies and the dean's special adviser on gender issues, told the paper that administrators wanted a forum where students could openly discuss sex.

"There’s a real need for students to have space to think about what happens to them and what they want to have happen," she said.

This past fall unidentified students caused a scandal when they circulated a "Pre-season Scouting Report" via e-mail with attractiveness rankings of incoming female freshmen.

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Comments

1. 11272784 - March 01, 2010 at 04:15 pm

A heckuva lot more interesting reading than finding a lost letter from Descartes.

2. blue_state_academic - March 01, 2010 at 04:28 pm

What -- no sex stories from faculty to be included? Much more interesting, with our years of experience, than stories from lowly undergrads

3. walshd14 - March 01, 2010 at 05:03 pm

This is the kind of self-indulgent crap I've come to expect from the Ivy League.

Not that it doesn't happen elsewhere, but I suppose it's particularly grating coming from the privileged elite.

4. willynilly - March 01, 2010 at 05:05 pm

Plain and simple, this is a vert stupid idea. More evidence of why the general public presently has such a low regard for higher education.

5. willynilly - March 01, 2010 at 05:06 pm

very stupid idea

6. chandru - March 01, 2010 at 05:40 pm

Has there been any research linking either early sexual experiences or sexual preoccupation among youth and their academic achievement or their achievements-at-work later in life? There is already some evidence that the ability to delay gratification results in higher achievement levels, but my question relates specifically to early sexual gratification and achievement in school/ work.

7. performance_expert - March 01, 2010 at 07:36 pm

Methinks Havelock Ellis covered this with his encyclopedic inventory of human activity sexual, unequaled in primary source interviews \ diversity of activities. It would make a lot more sense to teach a course in H.E. But you know, it was not published within the last decade so it has probably been removed from the Yale library.

"It is only the great (wo)men* who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great."
H.E.

*updated per gender equalization policy

8. performance_expert - March 01, 2010 at 07:55 pm

Maybe someone can do a qualitative analysis of orgasms per dollar.

9. ruritania - March 01, 2010 at 10:43 pm

"Yale Forum" at a newstand near you next to Penthouse Letters!

10. roro1618 - March 02, 2010 at 09:50 am

So when students start posting their sexual encounters with staff/faculty will Yale still be as "open"? What will happen? This is a PR nightmare waiting in the wings.

11. lisalita - March 02, 2010 at 11:13 am

OK, that's weird.