The Rise of the Student Sex Columnist Movement

By Alex DiBranco, The Nation. Posted October 4, 2009.

The 1996 launch of "Sex on Tuesday" at the University of California, Berkeley -- birthplace of the 1960s national student activist movement -- triggered the campus newspaper sex column phenomenon.

Within a few years, the sex column had spread to campuses across the country, becoming the "most publicized, electrifying, and divisive phenomena in student journalism," in the words of Dan Reimold, leading expert on the student newspaper sex column.

Reimold estimates that "during any given semester more than 200 sex and dating columns are being published in U.S. student newspapers, magazines, and online outlets.... What's most important here is perspective. In the mid-nineties, the number of student sex columns: zero." In addition to increasing student readership, the proliferation of student sex columns has drawn national attention, like a 2002 New York Times profile of student journalism's most famous sex columnist, Yale's Natalie Krinsky, whose most popular "Sex and the (Elm) City" articles drew hundreds of thousands of hits.

"We're not Generation X -- we're Generation Sex," one student columnist quipped to Reimold during the course of research for his upcoming book, Sex and the University: Celebrity, Controversy and a Student Journalism Revolution.

The attraction of a sex column is simple: most college students -- honestly, most people past puberty, period -- are either a) having sex; b) talking about having sex; or c) all of the above. Entertainment is usually a key reason behind the publication of sex columns, but the writing is not all about fun. These controversial pieces have proved battlegrounds for the rights of the student press and "appropriate" subjects for publication (ironically, only increasing their popularity and fueling the movement).

Frank LoMonte of the Student Press Law Center points out that "sex is one of those red-flag subjects," especially on conservative or religious campuses, whether in the form of sex columns, explicit pictures or other writing about sex. At private institutions where students lack First Amendment protections, this can lead to direct censorship -- hundreds of copies of a Wagner College newspaper running a sex column in 2003 were yanked from the stands, as was a 2004 publication at La Roche College, a Catholic institution, that advocated teaching safe-sex practices.

Other times, the controversy at a private or public institution is confined to angry letters to the editor or university administration, such as a letter from a parent (self-described as "no shrinking violet and certainly not a prude") expressing his shock at "the whole total lack of any self respect, self worth or religious morality" he felt was exhibited by a University of West Florida sex columnist, whom he also believed to be "emotionally disturbed and quite possibly mentally challenged."

Despite the constitutional right to freedom of the press, occasionally state universities and even state legislators have attempted to put a stop to sexual content they've found inappropriate. Reacting to cover art depicting a woman's breast and a column on oral sex in publications on two state-funded campuses, in 2005, Republican Arizona state legislator Russell Pearce, added a provision to the state budget that would deny funding to student newspapers. Mark Goodman of the SPLC told a local paper that, in twenty years of work on student press issues, this case about sex in the student press was the first time he had ever seen a state legislature attempt to bar student newspaper funding.

In the most recent incident, this spring University of Montana law professor Kristen Juras attempted to get the Montana Kaimin"Bess Sex" column censored, even contacting state legislators in her efforts to get the paper's funding pulled.

Reimold told me that for 90 percent of sex columnists, the only "political" point they are trying to make is that sex is OK and something we should talk about. Bess Davis of "Bess Sex" agrees that "sex really has nothing to do with politics...that's just an impression built up by the media," and views her column as serving a purpose in opening up discussion in an underreported subject. Yet her column attracted the ire of Juras, who "has a history of advocacy for extremist Christian and right-wing causes," writes Bill Oram, former editor in chief of the Kaimin, such as her position as adviser for the student Christian Legal Society, which sued in 2007 when the Student Bar Association denied it funding due to the group's exclusion of gay students from leadership positions and voting. And in Arizona, it was Pearce (described as "ultraconservative" by a Democratic representative) and his Republican colleagues attempting to censor student papers, with vocal dissent from Democrats.

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