If recent news has made it seem like Tufts is the only school where students get "sexiled," think again. A recent Playboy survey of college students makes it clear that students at other universities are having plenty of sex.
Playboy isn't limited to centerfolds stuffed under mattresses and the televised antics of Hugh Hefner and his girlfriends on the show "The Girls Next Door." The organization also conducts surveys. Not surprisingly, these scientific forays focus on only one topic: sex.
Playboy recently polled 5,000 college students on a variety of sex-related topics. Questions included "Do you always use a condom?," "Have you ever seen someone ‘ruffied'?," "Did you begin college as a virgin?," "Have you ever faked an orgasm or had sex with somebody who has faked an orgasm?," "Have you ever posed nude (or topless) for a camera phone?" and "Do you know a student who has slept with either a prof or T.A.?"
On the Web site that conducted the survey, PlayboyU.com (a social networking website for college students that is a subsidiary of Playboy magazine), there are an assortment of links to various categories of schools. These range from "The east coast's best student bodies" to the "Top 2009 Party Schools." These rankings may not be an accurate representation of student bodies, however, as students who do not frequent PlayboyU could not have responded to the surveys. Moreover, the results the Web site reported were inconsistent. Playboy posted its college sex poll on two separate sections. One poll stated that 41 percent of students know someone who has slept with a professor or T.A., while the other poll, featuring the identical question, stated 52 percent.
Tufts was not on the PlayboyU list, but a more informal survey of students gauged their reactions to the Web site's results.
Tufts students were shocked to learn that according to Playboy's survey, 58 percent of college students do not always use a condom. When asked the same question, Ursula (names have been changed in this article for purposes of anonymity) said "yes, yes, yes and yes."
Stephanie echoed the same reaction.
"The obvious reason [that I use condoms is that] STDs are nasty and no college student wants little babies with the people they hook up with."
When told of the question's results, Kate was perplexed.
"The result to this question is tragic because no one wants sexual[ly] transmitted diseases. You spread it along to other people and some of them are incurable."
According to Elaine D. Theodore, the Health Education and Prevention Coordinator at Tufts, when she "hears things about condoms, [she] hears about comfort levels, communication, and needs and desires. It brings up what people are asking for, what they want and what they receive.
"It concerns me that the healthy fear and scare of AIDS and other sexual transmitted infections (STI's) has subsided," Theodore added. "Playboy needs to sell their magazines. My goal is to have the safety of students in mind. Playboy does not have this agenda; they're a business."
Despite the unanimous responses that Jumbos gave for the question regarding condoms, Theodore offered some intriguing statistics on the sexual activities of students at Tufts that were more in line with Playboy's survey. Theodre stated that 57.9 percent of male sexually active Tufts students who had vaginal intercourse within the last thirty days used contraception; in addition, 60.1 percent of female Tufts students also used a contraceptive within this period.
The response from the Playboy survey to a question that all interviewed female students agreed upon at Tufts was whether they faked an orgasm. According to the Playboy survey, 77 percent of girls have faked one, but one student at Tufts said, "It's more like 90 percent." Kate echoed the observation and added, "It's hard for girls to reach orgasm. It's not an uncommon situation because most guys generally suck at sex. The guys that are good at it are so self-absorbed and egotistical. But someday, I will hopefully make that beautiful ‘O face.'"
One male Tufts student did not have a problem with knowing that such a high percentage of women may be deceiving their partners.
"Faking only matters when you find out. I had fun; as long as I don't know, it's good," he said. "To not fake it and admit it, it's a self-esteem killer to the guy. Once you say you can't [orgasm], there's no going back."
However, there was another male student, David, who offered the explanation that "it's not necessary for a girl to fake orgasm. It plays into the notion that guys are very narcissistic when it comes to sex. I don't care."
