Guess no one ever tried ringing her door bell (But she don’t need any of your pity)
Over at The American Spectator, one Lisa Fabrizio wants you (parents of college-age kids) to know that things have gotten very bad at America’s institutions of higher learning. The truth may shock you: college kids are having sex… with each other! And if you think that it’s only the students who have gotten easier, hold on:
In modern America, a college degree is now almost a given, a birthright for the nearly two-thirds of all high school graduates who go on to higher education.
A birthright… for the 51% (2002) of college students who actually complete their degree (within 5 years). Which is, in case one is wondering, 4.2% below the same figure for 1988. So pretty much as Lisa had predicted, except that the silly party won. I think this is largely due to the number of votes cast students who were too drunk to show up for class. (Giving everyone 6 years to finish doesn’t improve things by much).
And while binge drinking on college campuses has become almost an afterthought in the past few decades [!], it is the explosion of sexual activity on campus that should cause the most concern for parents.
Yes, the explosion. Probably one caused by an exploding kind of bomb:*
The study, by Scholly, Katz, Gascoigne, and Holck, which asked questions about various “sexual behaviors,” shows that while 80 percent of students had 0 or 1 sexual partner during the preceding year, only 22 percent of those students believed their fellow students had one or fewer partners. Students in this study perceived their fellow students were more sexually active than they actually were.
This isn’t going to be good for business:
Similar findings were reported in the 2002 National College Health Assessments. Seventy-one percent of participants had 1 or fewer sexual partners during the previous year. However, the common belief among respondents was that their peers had at least 3 partners during the previous year.
Wait, you say! Didn’t Lisa provide evidence for her claim that everyone is doing it with everyone these days on campus? Why yes — she did. Look!
Two recent stories detail what seems to be the declared major for many students: hooking up. The first deals with a study commissioned by Trojan brand condoms to determine which schools best promote “sexual health.” Given the study’s sponsor, one doesn’t have to be a genius, or even a college grad, to figure out what that means. One of the factors that differentiated the top-ranked schools was the availability of “free contraception including condom distribution.”
If the fact that a condom manufacturer sponsored a study about the availability of condoms on campus doesn’t convince you that the sex epidemic is real, maybe her second story will!
Which brings us to the second story concerning “sexual health” on campus. It seems that, although college dudes may have recourse to free condoms, the cost of protection for dude-ettes has become more problematic — you guessed it — due to the evil machinations of the Bush Administration. Cuts to Medicaid have apparently caused manufacturers of birth control to stop offering discounts to colleges and universities.
Lisa might want to stop by the right place to have an argument because this just isn’t turning out too well for her. Say, Lisa, well, if it’s not a personal question, are you a virgin?
A better situation for many college-bound young ladies might be one in which they cross their legs upon arriving at school and keep them that way until they graduate.
Fortunately for all the girls who aren’t Sheri Valera out there, not going to college seems to be your ticket to a life of Lisa-sanctioned whoredom. (Either that or you’re not considered part of the “many” for whom crossing your legs is necessary).
But of course this would negate the need for the numerous college programs designed to promote promiscuity and ready students for a lifetime of random and rampant sex: the very reason you slaved all your life to send them off to college.
Yes, yes… college nowadays prepares the 27% of the population that graduates for a lifetime of random and rampant sex… in addition to stuff like this:
A 1998 report published by the Institute for Higher Education Policy reviews the individual benefits that college graduates enjoy, including higher levels of saving, increased personal/professional mobility, improved quality of life for their offspring, better consumer decision making, and more hobbies and leisure activities.
That sounds just as bad as this:
Students working toward a degree are likely to set their sights on the long-term payoffs—which include more career options, better promotion opportunities, higher earnings, and lower unemployment—that a college education provides. [PDF]
Still — as Lisa so helpfully points out, one should always look on the bright side of life, because:
But it could be worse.
What could be worse? You make the call.
They could be ENJOYING it.
Huh?
Collegeseimawhowhatnow?
You are giving this babbler WAY too much credit.
I bet even Megan McArdle would laugh at Lisa’s incoherency problem.
Megan McArdle: What I meant to say is: Lisa Fabrizio is a dink.
“80 percent of students had 0 or 1 sexual partner”
Well, in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, anyway.
” …numerous college programs designed to promote promiscuity and ready students for a lifetime of random and rampant sex…”
What college did Lisa Fabrizio go to?
It sounds like it was teh awsum!!1!111!!!
in the words of cormac mccarthy, she is all et up with the dumbass.
Hey, I resent that! At least engineers know enough math to tell the difference between “1 or 0 sex partners” and “an explosion of sexual activity”.
D’oh. Must remember to reset “Name” field after posing as a nutjob…
I get it when wingnuts whine about the all-nude whorehouses that are our nation’s high schools (even though I still don’t care). But I’m a loss as to why I’m supposed to care about consenting adults having sex with each other, and I’m dumbfounded by the idea that college is the thing that makes people want to fuck each other and get drunk.
When I go home to visit in Upstate New York, I hang out with lots of townies who either never went to college or flunked out. If their lives are models of chastity and sobriety, you sure could have fooled me.
I bet even Megan McArdle would laugh at Lisa’s incoherency problem.
McArdle is currently busy demonstrating her bona fides as a modern-day Chicago Boy.
Liberty or Patrick Henry would be my first guess of Ms. Fabrizio’s alma mater.
I would say that “providing free condoms” is a fairly reasonable factor when deciding the ranking of a school’s effort to boost the sexual health of their students.
“t seems that, although college dudes may have recourse to free condoms, the cost of protection for dude-ettes has become more problematic — you guessed it — due to the evil machinations of the Bush Administration. Cuts to Medicaid have apparently caused manufacturers of birth control to stop offering discounts to colleges and universities.”
Cuts in Medicaid make female-oriented birth control more expensive, thus harder to obtain. Yeah, I’d say that’s the Bushco’s fault. Seems reasonable.
So, her claim is that college kids are fucking like catholic rabbits. She then backs up her claim with evidence that, well, proves that she’s wrong, and then she proceeds to say that her debunked theories means that all those slutty kids are going to CONTINUE to have the rampant sex after college, even though they aren’t having rampant sex IN college, as per her facts.
See, it occurs to me to point out that the fraction of the college kids who really are having wild sex parties are going to have wild sex parties, contraception or not. But since there’s not enough sex-crazed frat boys and drunken sorority girls out there to account for all those stupid, knocked-up slut whores in the Planned Baby Death Factories-hood, then that would mean that a sizable portion of them come from NON-college educated sex-crazed kids.
In the red states.
I realize my rambling here have no real point, or gist, but then, neither does her article, and I’M not getting paid for MY rambling, so fuck it.
I think 1 partner counts as “an explosion” only if you factor in the (horrors!) unlikelihood that the participants were married to each other. An explosion of moralistic wingnut cranium, that is.
Love the sly Monty Python reference, gonna have to try to find a video of that sketch.
I’m sorry, I must have drifted off. Did you say something?
mikey
Forget drinking themselves to brain death, our (adult) children are having sex! Someone bring out the fainting coach!
On birth control: While it is good to have the pill, why does she act like condoms can’t help girls out at all?
Condoms make the women even MORE sluttier, Hysterical, because it means she has less a chance of getting punished (strike thru unknown) getting pregnanet for opening her legs.
Well, if you’ve had zero sexual partners, and then you go to college and have one, that’s an increase of infinity, and a percentage increase of a shocking infinity-times-one-hundred. If these trends continue… ayyyy!
the numerous college programs designed to promote promiscuity and ready students for a lifetime of random and rampant sex
Dang! Did I miss this in the course cataloge at OSU in ’73?
I hate to ask but has she, or these studies, looked at the rate of sex for people 18–21 who DON’T go to college? In my wholly uninformed opinion, the rates are probably pretty similiar, although probably the rates for contraception use are lower.
Great, so in life, just like in the movie Porky’s, everyone thinks that everyone else is get laid a lot more than they themselves are. Big fuckin’ deal. And how does a 9% decrease in the number of students with more than 1 sexual partner count as an “explosion” of sexual activity? I mean what the fuck. I feel like an asshole for even having to point this out.
I’m dumbfounded by the idea that college is the thing that makes people want to fuck each other and get drunk.
Nothing like a little Principles and Practices of Genomic Theory to make you teh hawt!
What I learned in college: everyone else is getting more than I am. The end.
Meanwhile over at McArdle’s blog thing:
WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO!!!!! THERE IS ONLY ONE FORCE THAT CAN HELP US!!!!!
The cry goes out for:
THE INVISIBLE HAND!
Come and save us, Invisible Hand!
With the international cartel known as The Anchor Babies momentarily neutralized, The Invisible Hand turns his attention to the Machiavellian machinations of Import Substitution.
Calmly he walks into M’s office and asks for the dossier …
TO BE CONTINUED!!!!!
She can take comfort from the fact that many of these students will go on to grad. school and then sex–and most other pleasurable activities–will be drained of joy. That should make her happy.
What is import substitution?
the numerous college programs designed to promote promiscuity and ready students for a lifetime of random and rampant sex
Dang! Did I miss this in the course cataloge at OSU in ‘73?
I dunno, g. The part of ’73 I spent in northern arizona had these exact programs. And it wasn’t even a college!
Although, to be fair, there was a further program in place to promote hallucinogenic drug use. To my mind, they all seemed to go together in some kind of perfect curriculum…
mikey
silly mikey – I went to a Serious University. Promiscuity Promotion was an extra curricular activity! Kind of like being on the Pep Squad.
The only thing articles like this make me feel is jealousy and regret for not getting laid as often as these damn whippersnappers.
What the hell is going on? 80% of (non)fucking college kids had one or fewer partners, and this is an explosion???? Let a genuine old dfh tell ya, they aren’t using 1966-1970 as a baseline. What is wrong with today’s youth–are they not horny, or can’t find the bar or the pusher man, or what?
P.S. I don’t recall needing a college course to explain this stuff, either.
The weengnutjobs lament:
Everyone else has had more sex than me.
so.
My college experience was average: I had half a partner.
OK, well, howbout this one:
Adam Smith’s treatise on the economics of sex: The Invisible Hand Job
I’m outta here!
LuLu,
right on!
I blame the rock and roll for this predicament. Specifically, Jimmy Buffet. These kids, the high risk ones, they listen to this stuff and start believing it. Otherwise nice young wholesome fraternity and sorority kids get turned away from god and down the worldly path every day due to this initiation to “fun republican” music.
Anyway, I can prove her theory of binge drinking and sex wrong with two words: “Whisky” and “dick”
2drnk 2fuk
Cur
But of course this would negate the need for the numerous college programs designed to promote promiscuity and ready students for a lifetime of random and rampant sex: the very reason you slaved all your life to send them off to college.
The same thing as “teaching second graders about homosexuality.” To ninnies like Lisa Fabrizio (any bets on her religious affiliation/indoctrination?) any thing that mentions sex, or that a family may have “two mommies” is considered a graphic sex instruction class, with no suggestions that you should keep it in your pants, or “keep your legs crossed” or use “protection.”
And certainly when parents, priests, teachers, etc., take the attitude that “sex is for making babies, & it makes your body ugly afterwards, & let’s not talk about it, shall we?” (or mom/dad are just too hung-up to have “the talk”) & the high schools are teaching “abstinence only,” it’s not a good idea to tell young, healthy, hormonal adults, on their own for the first time, that IF they are going to do it, thay shouldn’t put themselves at risk.
But no, for the righties merely mentioning sex means that not only is it OK, but that students HAVE to go out & get some, and sex would never have occurred to them w/o one of these “numerous college programs designed to promote promiscuity and ready students for a lifetime of random and rampant sex.” You know, just shut up about it & it stays in the pants & the legs stay crossed. But even mention it & the hormones are released, in an “explosion.”
Classic wingnut logic, combined w/ classic religious based erotophobia. Virtually everything scares these fools, from sex to Mooooslims to organic food.
Hoosier X: Briefly, import substitution or import substitution industrialization (ISI) is a development policy that seeks to protect and develop native industries so that foreign-produced products—most often finished goods—can be replaced by their locally produced equivalents. This was a prevalent model for economic development in many (though not all) parts of Latin America in the middle of the 20th century, beginning in the 30s when it was a matter of necessity (thanks to the Great Depression) and continuing through the 40s and 50s when it was clearly articulated as an industrialization model and became the guiding economic policy for many governments. Neoliberals like McArdle have knee-jerk negative reactions to its mention because ISI implies an active role on the part of the state in cultivating and protecting local targeted industries.
I hope this helps.
Dude, i can’t believe I forgot about this.
http://www.jokefrog.com/flash/everyone-has-had-more-sex.shtml
while 80 percent of students had 0 or 1 sexual partner during the preceding year
The other 20% were rooting like rabbits.
Thank you, J-
I was afraid I might be going out on a limb by making fun of McArdle for getting her panties in a twist for something I know nothing about. Although I figured, it’s McArdle; of course she’s being a twit.
And I was right.
Monsieur Le Chat Noir and Some Guy, you beat me to it. Rats.
Mind you, TISM are something that Australia can be very proud of: as they put it, we are “Australia, The Lucky Cunt”.
And if all the girls are keeping their legs crossed, doesn’t that mean the boys will have to have sex with each other? Strange that a wingnut would promote teh ghey.
No no no, Qetesh, don’t believe all that “prison/shipboard/college ghey sex is just ’cause there are no women around” crap! We’ll just use our paws, as nature intended (also for bananas, heh heh).
When I was in college, I got laid a lot. ‘Course, that was in the late ’70s and early ’80s. And I was an English major and we listened to a lot of The Pretenders and The Cars and had living-room keggers in our off-campus apartments, and so I’m sure things have gotten worse better by now . . .
Sorry, what?
Strike-through worked in preview. I guess commenting, like college, looks a bit better in retrospect.
She can take comfort from the fact that many of these students will go on to grad. school and then sex–and most other pleasurable activities–will be drained of joy. That should make her happy.
For those of us who only made it through our bachelor’s, I would substitute “marriage” for grad school. Same difference.
I doubt that McArdle would enjoy being that close to “liberal,” even with the “neo” in front of it.
I just learned what Dick Cheney did in college.
Smiling Mortician: Don’t ask me why, I never will know, but writing out “strike” will make the line go.
I can’t ever give a damn too much about the sex end of it. When I hear wingnuts doing their Cultural Degeneration thing about the surge in teenage sex – and man, I’ve heard it like a zillion times over the decades, and every time it’s like Breaking News! – the image that comes to mind is an angry old lady standing knee-deep in the surf in one of those prissy swimsuits with like flounce around the edge, lips pursed with disapproval at the naughty, awful tide, parasol in one hand, slap slap slapping at the waves with the palm of her other hand.
Who fails to grin and snort when you read how some big hit teevee show, or some political tendency, or this or that pop-musical genre, or some teenage clothing trend is thing somehow responsible for teenagers being so unnaturally interested in sex the way they are these days? And that if the purported cause was just banned by legislation, from then on America’s Youth would naturally become indifferent and totally cease kissing and fondling one another until well after the age of legal majority? The idea being that teenagers would be indifferent to sex altogether if not for the third-hand abstract stimulation they get from the to-be-proscribed influence, yeah, right.
Another good one is that if those darn breweries would stop making beer ads featuring pretty girls in bikinis, then never ever again would teenage boys want to drink beer. Because aside from the artificially induced subliminal connection between bikinis and beer there really isn’t any reason anyone would ever want to drink beer.
So I read that junk and it just rolls right off. But now when I read
In modern America, a college degree is now almost a given
by which she means
Oh that other half? Tee hee! What other half? They don’t exist!
Now that I don’t, what kind of worthless moron, I can’t laugh that off, I’d like to grab, you stupid son-of-a, I get all, I just wanna, arr arrh arrhghg rippp! AHHGH AK AK AKK HULK SMASH
[…] fact that the vast majority of students have sex lives that rival that of their parents in terms of frequency and variation of partners and go straight to giving yourself a wedgie over the fraction of the 20% who are actually getting […]
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