Why Sex Ed Weeks on campus make sense

Reid Mihalko

When I started college at 17, I'd bedded only one man, and was pretty clueless about sex. During my university years, I learned by doing (pun intended), including hooking up with my first girlfriend (notably the night before I took the LSAT — I don't recommend this study habit!). But overall, I graduated still relatively innocent and naive.

So when it comes to sex ed on college campuses, I'm all for it. Yet not everyone is so enthusiastic. The University of New Mexico's recent Sex Week, which included talks such as the consent-themed "How to Be a Gentleman AND Get Laid," "O-Face Oral" and the Spanish-language "Todo Sobre Orgasmos," came under such public fire that UNM offered an apology, calling the programming "sensational and controversial."

Sex educator Hunter Riley, co-creator of Sex Week with UNM's Women's Resource Center, says, "I think about 99 percent of the criticism is people being squeamish about open discussion that adults (who happen to be in college) have sex."

Indeed. This is especially timely given California's passage of a college "yes means yes" law (making the standard for discerning consent whether both people said yes, instead of someone saying no), with a similar system being implemented at State University of New York schools.

Behind the Sex Week recrimination is a fundamental divide between those who think sex should only be discussed behind closed doors, if at all, and those who promote open discussion. Nathaniel Hunter wrote of the "Gentleman" talk given by sex educator Reid Mihalko at a different college, "I, for one, miss the days when sex was something private, personal and special, and not something you demonstrated in public with dildos and 'vulva puppets'."

This hush-hush approach to sex is nonsense and leaves so many in the dark. What if you don't know where your lover's clitoris is — or your own? What if you received abstinence-only education, or none at all? Pushing sex into the shadows isn't going to make it go away. Hey, we're human.

Students know this, which is why they're hosting innovative sex weeks and other discussions — on their terms. Maybe it's talks on "Bad A$$ MCs and Big Booty Beauties" and "Hooking Up with God" at Northwestern Sex Week, an aphrodisiac cooking class at the University of Tennessee's Sex Week or the student-run curriculum FemSex started at my alma mater, UC-Berkeley.

Want to talk dirty all year long? Columbia University has a student-led BDSM education group, Conversio Virium, while UW-Madison's Sex Out Loud hands out safer-sex supplies and hosts events.

It shouldn't be a news flash that students want to talk about sex, or that they need to. First and foremost they need somewhere they won't be judged, ridiculed or questioned about their interests. Then they need quality information that won't put them at risk.

Sure, parents may prefer to assume homework comes before horniness, but that's not reality. These are adults who are ill-served by sexual silence. Over 1,000 people have signed a MoveOn petition calling on UNM to support, rather than slam, Sex Week, in the name of safer and healthier student bodies.

Explains Riley, "If people feel comfortable speaking up for what they like, they might also feel more comfortable speaking up when something isn't OK."

Echoes Mihalko, "All my talks are designed to teach people better communication and sexual self-esteem skills. The way to lessen sexual assault is to give students the tools to talk openly, frankly and without shame about sex."

College is precisely the time when young adults need guidance about sex. They're both cocky and uncertain, and many don't know whom to trust. (That can be said for adults too, but that's another story.) Sex Weeks give students a chance to learn about topics they might otherwise only have access to via a Google search.

Wouldn't you rather see a professional teaching the next generation about sexual health than an algorithm? I would.