WSJ Exclusive: Princeton Full of Skanks
Christian Sahner, Princeton's most adorable conservative heartthrob, has written a--yawn!--column in the Wall Street Journal bitching about a university-wide conspiracy to transubstantiate innocent freshmen girls into total skankadoos. How does liberal academia accomplish this, you may ask? By putting on a 20-minute sketch, entitled "Sex on a Saturday Night" about all sorts of people on campus who love to get laid. "Sex on a Saturday Night" is so depraved that it even depicts a Gay!
Sahner reminds us, as all conservative columnists invariably do, that extra-marital sex results in feelings of "exploitation, discomfort, regret and… chronic depression." He also reminds us, several times, that he attended Princeton, and that he is, in all likelihood, still a virgin.
After the jump: Princeton's War on Christmas!
Just kidding. There's no war on Christmas, not yet! But you can read the rest of Sahner's--yawn!--column here.
Sexed-Up Sex-Ed
By CHRISTIAN C. SAHNER
September 5, 2007; Page A16
College freshman are now on campus or soon will be. If my experience arriving at Princeton University four years ago is any guide, the days ahead could be more than a little awkward for them. One event in particular sours many freshman orientations: sexed-up sex-ed.
At Princeton, the freshman class must attend "Sex on a Saturday Night" (SoSN) during its first week. It's a university-organized, student-performed play designed to warn about sexual assault and alcohol abuse. Many schools have similar programs. Its noble intentions are overshadowed, however, by a deleterious message: College is time to get busy (and not just in the library)!
SoSN revolves around Joe, a bookish upperclassmen, who is egged on by his peers to "score big" on his first date with Frances, a naïve freshman. Armed with condoms and the keys to an isolated lovepad on campus, he sets out. The play then turns to their sex-crazed friends, who spend their Saturday plotting about hooking up. Meanwhile, Joe and Frances get very drunk. She passes out and he, on the brink of a blackout, has sex with her on a coatroom floor. The next morning, in a poignant scene, Joe realizes he committed date rape.
If SoSN were only about preventing sexual assault, it would be a positive contribution to freshman year. But that's not its underlying lesson. The play spends much of its time glorifying the hook-up culture, and through crude jokes and jejune stereotypes, drowning out the message about rape. Every one of the play's 10 characters (including one gay couple) is sexually active, save for the token abstainer, who comes off as hokey (and owns a copy of Playboy).
Princeton does "not take a position on the sex lives of students," according to spokesman Eric Quinones, but the "anything goes" attitude of SoSN is a far cry from neutrality. For many Princetonians and their parents, the underlying message -- that it's perfectly healthy to be sexually active -- is hardly neutral. By presenting consent as the principle moral consideration before having sex, the play makes the important question of whether you should have sex in the first place seem irrelevant.
Princeton's administrators are intelligent people of good will, but what they sometimes miss is the big-picture perspective on how programs like SoSN can be harmful for students. Indeed, the play gives freshmen the false sense that virtually all of their peers are sexually active, with the resulting message that, "Maybe you should be too." But according to the 2002 National Survey for Family Growth, about 35% of 18-19 year olds have not had sex -- a figure that increases among those who come from intact families or have mothers with at least some higher education (true for most Princetonians). A 2007 senior thesis survey of 1,210 Princeton students looked at the issue more broadly, and found that around half of all freshmen have never hooked up (a hookup is here defined as any physical intimacy outside a committed relationship).
More worrying, the play doesn't seem to acknowledge that hooking up can be a risky contact sport, and rape isn't the only kind of collateral damage. SoSN is silent on the unplanned pregnancies and high rates of STDs on college campuses. And as University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox notes, "A growing body of research suggests that sex -- particularly sex with more than one partner -- puts young women but not necessarily men at risk of depression, suicide, and a loss of respect in the eyes of their partners." The Princeton survey bears this out: The vast majority of students report feelings of exploitation, discomfort, regret and guilt after a hookup, with rates higher among women.
SoSN also discards the golden rule of cultural sensitivity. Imagine how a student with traditional views of sex feels when he seems to be the only one not laughing at jokes about "screaming orgasms" or flavored condoms. You don't have to be religious or conservative to realize that these students probably feel forgotten and a little alienated at SoSN.
As an undergraduate, I and other concerned students discussed these objections several times with the administration. In a welcome effort to accommodate us, they offered to change one supporting character to seem realistically more abstinent. The big problems, though, were untouched. One university official worried that further changes would add too many messages to the play. Ironically, she either failed or refused to see that SoSN carries a lot of one-sided messages that already overpower the supposedly central lesson on rape.
If only SoSN were an isolated instance of poor judgment about sex-ed. Games of "Sex Jeopardy" for residential groups and scathing university-sponsored lectures like "The Religious Right's Obsession with Gay Sex" demonstrate a pattern of programs that either quietly encourage sex or unfairly denigrate traditional values.
I wouldn't trade my time at Princeton for anything, but it could have gotten off to a smoother start. Princeton can begin to improve things by changing SoSN, or at least make it not mandatory. It would be best to make freshmen attend an entirely new program that stayed focused on the evils of rape. But if the university wants to keep the play, it would do better to give a truly balanced portrait of sex, its ethics and risks.
Mr. Sahner, a 2007 graduate of Princeton University, was a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal this summer.
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September 6th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
“College freshman are now on campus or soon will be…”
All one of them?
September 6th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
haha, sounds like someone needs to get some poonani
September 6th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
yes, what’s the deal with people writing “freshman” instead of “freshmen”? Is that some nod to political correctness that my foreignness does not allow me to comprehend?
September 6th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
actually, college is very much the time to *get busy* in the library.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Kudos to Mr. Sahner for pointing out that not all of us are comfortable with such flippant discussions about sex. Sex is a serious matter which, quite honestly, terrifies me on a personal level. I am glad that someone else is willing to stand up and expose the insidious bias inherent in not favoring one form of sexual activity over another.
September 7th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Fact: There is a couple in the play who have chosen to wait until marriage, or at least, wait until not that night to have sex. They are presented with an equal amount of respect for their choices as the others, and in fact, if you pay attention to the play, you will see that the people who choose to “hook up” drunkenly are much unhappier than the people who choose to wait, who seem to be fine with it. So what’s the big deal?
September 7th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Ah, the Anscombe Society at its finest.
September 7th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Let’s not forget this little gem:
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/04/26/opinion/12747.shtml
Apparently dressing in drag is a mental disorder!
Why the WSJ gave him a soapbox for his oft-disputed opinions, we’ll never know…
September 8th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Getting busy in the library is most certianly sexual.
Casual gay male sex happens all the time in the remote mens’ bathrooms in Van Pelt.
September 11th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
@ Buddhist Sahner:
Rupert Murdoch’s empire wastes no time with its newest acquisitions, I see.
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:50 am
This guy Sahner (and anyone wasting their time espousing this kind of c%%%) needs to just get a grip. Wake up, Sahner!!!!!!!!! You’ve already graduated from college!!!! America is a free country, bud! More importantly, if you’re so concerned about all of these moralistic issues and the degradation of certain “values”, maybe re-prioritize your time and make a more “meaningful” impact for mankind in countries where these important values are neglected/ignored on a much larger scale (i.e. India, China, Africa….). Why do you care what a bunch of 20-year olds at Princeton (0.000000000001% of world’s population) do on a Saturday night? Why don’t you get on a plane and take a trip to China (population 1.4+ billion) and learn Chinese and try to better understand why China now has one of the highest HIV growth rates in the world, and, equally important, how you can maybe use your super-power intellect to communicate ways to improve this situation? Didn’t you already graduate from college??? Aren’t you a Rhodes Scholar? Why are you spending your time continuing to write “Daily Princetonian” articles after graduation??? Dude, c’mon, man!! Read the front page of the WSJ each day, buddy: China, China, China, India, developing countries….That’s where you can have a meaningful impact, bud. Let the few dozen promiscuous Princeton kids have their fun for a few years. Focus your energies on something more meaningful for mankind, Rhodie ;)
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:50 am
This guy Sahner (and anyone wasting their time espousing this kind of c%%%) needs to just get a grip. Wake up, Sahner!!!!!!!!! You’ve already graduated from college!!!! America is a free country, bud! More importantly, if you’re so concerned about all of these moralistic issues and the degradation of certain “values”, maybe re-prioritize your time and make a more “meaningful” impact for mankind in countries where these important values are neglected/ignored on a much larger scale (i.e. India, China, Africa….). Why do you care what a bunch of 20-year olds at Princeton (0.000000000001% of world’s population) do on a Saturday night? Why don’t you get on a plane and take a trip to China (population 1.4+ billion) and learn Chinese and try to better understand why China now has one of the highest HIV growth rates in the world, and, equally important, how you can maybe use your super-power intellect to communicate ways to improve this situation? Didn’t you already graduate from college??? Aren’t you a Rhodes Scholar? Why are you spending your time continuing to write “Daily Princetonian” articles after graduation??? Dude, c’mon, man!! Read the front page of the WSJ each day, buddy: China, China, China, India, developing countries….That’s where you can have a meaningful impact, bud. Let the few dozen promiscuous Princeton kids have their fun for a few years. Focus your energies on something more meaningful for mankind, Rhodie ;)
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:53 am
This guy Sahner (and anyone wasting their time espousing this kind of c%%%) needs to just get a grip. Wake up, Sahner!!!!!!!!! You’ve already graduated from college!!!! America is a free country, bud! More importantly, if you’re so concerned about all of these moralistic issues and the degradation of certain “values”, maybe re-prioritize your time and make a more “meaningful” impact for mankind in countries where these important values are neglected/ignored on a much larger scale (i.e. India, China, Africa….). Why do you care what a bunch of 20-year olds at Princeton (0.000000000001% of world’s population) do on a Saturday night? Why don’t you get on a plane and take a trip to China (population 1.4+ billion) and learn Chinese and try to better understand why China now has one of the highest HIV growth rates in the world, and, equally important, how you can maybe use your super-power intellect to communicate ways to improve this situation? Didn’t you already graduate from college??? Aren’t you a Rhodes Scholar? Why are you spending your time continuing to write “Daily Princetonian” articles after graduation??? Dude, c’mon, man!! Read the front page of the WSJ each day, buddy: China, China, China, India, developing countries….That’s where you can have a meaningful impact, bud. Let the few dozen promiscuous Princeton kids have their fun for a few years. Focus your energies on something more meaningful for mankind, Rhodie ;)
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
You got to check this video out I found on Youtube. Its badass.
Let me know what you guys think.
youtube video