Sex! College kids! Whopee!

Yesterday, I had an interview with The New Yorker. I've been asked to write an article for Hustler. An article in our paper created a stir that was covered by Conan, Kimmel and Leno. Whoopi and Barbara dished about it on "The View." We've seen a drastic bounce in hits on our Web site. And, really, none of this should be happening.

I have to say, when we wrote our article exposing Tufts' new policy barring sex while your roommate is in the room, the piece was something we laughed about, fleetingly considered editorializing on and then discarded as a reasonable move that didn't warrant too much attention. The Office of Residential Life and Learning (ResLife) had put the rule in place just in case a student has a serious problem and wants something concrete to fall back on; if no one brings a complaint to ResLife's attention, we figured, the office is not going to come crusading for Puritanical justice. And we still feel this way.

But the news media haven't really seen eye to eye — more accurately, the media have not taken the time to decide where they stand.

We published an editorial yesterday calling the media out for their handling of this "issue" — not because we were offended or threatened by the coverage, as some have implied, but because we saw the stories that were being bandied about by television and Internet news sources as surface-surfing, hastily reported sensationalism that dealt with an inconsequential news item irresponsibly.

Case and point: CNN's widely read article has people across the country (probably tens of thousands of them, if not more) convinced that Tufts has outlawed sexiling. The Pitt News even editorialized against Tufts' apparent move to ban sexiling, citing the CNN piece.

There's very little wrong with reporting on something silly and whimsical just because consumers get a kick out of it. The Daily is just a bit disappointed that the context into which the media have placed this rule — thrown into ResLife's handbook as a precaution, and a relatively benign one — has fostered such misrepresentation and overanalysis.

I would think that nobody reads our editorials, from the limited response we usually get to them. But when we published yesterday's lamenting the news media's obsession with this sex story, I heard positive responses from a wide array of students and other community members. Looks like the Daily isn't alone in suggesting that maybe the news industry needs to grow up.

— Giovanni Russonello