For years our society has worried about and questioned the increasing percentage of teens having sex. We all put on our thinking caps, wonder why and can’t seem to come up with an answer other than the media. However the answer is so easy to see — clearly it’s the half-truths and misinformation offered to us from middle school to the present, no matter the form.
A few Fridays ago, Nahal Toosi, a reporter from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, followed around Caley Meals, The Badger Herald’s new sex columnist, during a night on the town. Toosi wanted an in-depth perspective on Meals, interviewing her about her weekly column, “Between the Sheets.”
A few weeks later, Toosi’s article was published on the front page of the Journal Sentinel’s Lifestyle section. As I read the article, I became extremely disappointed with the information presented and the manner in which college students were portrayed as a whole, not to mention that the article did not do Meals the justice she deserved.
Toosi’s piece, published Nov. 17 and titled “Sex 101: The Nitty Gritty,” is a great example of the half truths and misinformation we receive from the media. Her article began with the following three sentences: “Here’s the bare naked truth: Lots of college students have sex. They like having sex. And sometimes they’re drunk when they’re having sex.”
Those three sentences are pretty straightforward, but so many questions rose in my mind after reading them. What does Toosi consider “lots?” How many college students did she survey? Or did she simply generalize? How many college students really do have sex?
When you read Toosi’s aforementioned sentences you take them seriously, as facts. When you read Meals’ column, you take them as personal stories, comic relief, as her experiences and her opinions — a huge difference. But like Toosi, some of us constantly generalize and don’t research to find the true facts.
Human Development 363 guest speaker and University Health Services’ Dr. Paul Grossberg informed the class on adolescent sexuality issues in late September this year. I agreed with his thinking, as he explained adolescents need to know what is real and what everyone else is “not doing.”
Grossberg mentioned that Young & Modern did a reader poll (about 15,000 readers which targets late grade-school to high schoolers) on the percentage of readers who had had intercourse. The survey indicated that only 28 percent of those polled reported having sex.
However, when Dr. Grossberg asked a seventh grade class how many teens were having intercourse, the class estimated about 80 percent. Noticeably, this shows that teens have an unrealistic view of what other teens are doing.
According to the National Health Survey on Sexual Activity in the United States, about 68 percent of college students have reported current sexual activity (in the last three months). The percentage drops to about 62 percent for college students reporting recent (30 days or less) sexual activity.
Female students are significantly more likely than male students to have sex, a fact I am sure many people were not aware of. Male students, however, seem to report significantly more sex partners than female students.
Not as many as we thought, is it? If you are going to make a statement, you have to back it up and make it credible.
To make a story credible, it would probably be a good idea to represent a number of persons with different opinions so you acquire all sides and perspectives. However, in “Sex 101: The Nitty Gritty, ” a variety of opinions are ignored.
Regarding Meals’ column, Toosi quotes two students, aside from Lars Russell, The Badger Herald’s editor-in-chief. One of the students is a “self-avowed born-again Christian who’s active in faith-based groups at UW-Madison” and the other “a member of Lifewise, a faith-based group that promotes sexual abstinence,” respectively. Both students feel the article glorifies sex and simply “puts information out there that doesn’t need to be there.”
Obviously, these two students do not represent our university as a whole, as not every student feels that sex before marriage is wrong or that Meals’ column is a bad idea. Toosi should have obtained quotes from students with opinions differing from the two mentioned above.
It’s good to be open about sexual matters. The topic of Meals’ column is one that many college students on our campus and other campuses are interested in. We just have to be aware and careful with the way we present the material and information, and be able to separate fact from fiction. Sometimes I think we tend to overlook how big an impact we actually have on children, teens, young adolescents and even adults.
Nina Balistreri ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in strategic communication.