Julia Gottlieb: The sordid side of university life

An anonymous author once said, "writing is a lot like sex. At first you do it because you like it. Then you find yourself doing it for a few close friends and people you like. But if you're any good at all... you end up doing it for money."

A good columnist and a prostitute both need extensive circulation bases. So in order to boost readership and further close the gap between intercourse and writing, numerous college papers have started running sex columns. Examples of titles range from "Sex on Tuesdays" to the "Sexpert Tells All."

Always one to keep up with literary trends, I decided to drum up a sex column of my own. But, unfortunately, there aren't that many common sexual events at Penn to address. We all date different people in their own scenes with different rituals.

You have everything from the Greek date parties to the downtown gay bar scene to the late night scrabble match over mac and cheese.

In fact, a friend of mine recently mentioned that "dirty hippie season" was over -- I never even knew it existed. When I asked her to explain, she joked that when it gets cold, not only do the Frisbee games and smoking sessions disappear from College Green, the kids also just stop leaving their houses all together. It seems like it would make a great anthropological study.

But the goals that seem to exist for everyone are the elusive graduation deadlines. That's right, you know what I'm talking about.

It's why they sell condoms in the Van Pelt Library bathrooms. And it's why we wince when little kids climb on the button.

For those of you still in the dark, the tradition may have started when Spy magazine published a list of the best places to have sex on college campuses. Penn's own Van Pelt and button statue made the cut. It turns out they're favorites for exhibitionist undergraduates who want to blow off some stress during midterms.

Curious as to whether the rumors were actual goals or just fictitious anecdotes, I conducted a completely insignificant survey. The sample pool was not randomly selected or especially large, but to my surprise, several of my friends have already had sex in the library. My well-documented and soon to be archived interviews went something like this:

"You hook up in the library before?"

"Oh, hell yeah."

"Where?"

"In those collapsible shelves."

"Gross!"

Another friend managed to have sex on the second floor of Houston Hall. I think it would have been much more symbolic if it had somehow involved a crepe and a picture of Ben Franklin, but I guess we all have to settle for reality sometimes.

In case you're concerned that there is a particularly perverse atmosphere on Penn's campus, please realize that we're not alone. One of my all-time favorite publications -- Esquire -- reported that out of 1,000 college students surveyed, 10 percent committed "lewd acts" in the library.

Articles have cited the athenaeum antics of students at George Washington, New York and Brown universities. Even Yale's Porn and Chicken club planned to create the cinematographic masterpiece, The StaXXX.

Though it seems to just be an overload of hormones and a lack of supervision, perhaps there's a deeper meaning to all of this. After all, while the library holds the most coveted sex spot, it is also one of the intellectual centers of our university.

Maybe Penn students subconsciously aim to spend their most intimate moments surrounded by all the remnants of past academic heroes -- a sort of modern tribute. That, or they just want to bring the most anti-intellectual event into the library and stick it to the rest of us nerds.

Whatever the motivation behind such exhibitionism, it makes me want to wash my hands after touching anything in Van Pelt.

I'd recommend you do the same.

Julia Gottlieb is a senior English and Music major from Lancaster, Pa.

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