The Barrows scandal brought a powerful person's sexual past into the limelight once again. The accusations make for interesting news fodder as promiscuity takes the front page. While necessary to report, each scandal that has happened in recent years has left an impact on the impressionable mind of college students en route to maturity. We are the generation that grew up watching coverage of the Clinton scandal. Sex has always been a glaringly open part of culture as we know it.
Our culture on campus has made promiscuity into a badge of honor and fidelity or virginity a shroud of secret shame. Case in point: on the popular website
www.facebook.com, there are 56 groups dedicated to being some form of slut, whore, ho or skank, with a combined membership in the thousands. There are only three groups that proclaim virginity in a positive light. Total membership: 105.
It is doubtful that there are only 105 virgins on campus, and rather sad that only this handful is brave enough to go against a societal trend to admit it. It is much less intimidating today to walk down the street wearing a T-shirt that advertises \I'm easy.""
However, the wearer of such wanton propaganda is an ironic sandwich board promoting a stereotype many people spend their social lives trying to avoid. Akin to self-deprecating humor, it's only okay if one says it themselves-certainly the person wearing said T-shirt would not enjoy being publicly denounced by their peers as being easy, because sexual behavior and how one advertises it is a personal choice.
College students are legal adults, and are assumed responsible and intelligent enough to make their own decisions. However, being an individual decision, those who are sexually active should not ridicule others who have different ideas on intimacy. Likewise, people who pursue sexual relations in a responsible manner should not be judged.
Responsibility is the key issue. Though one-night stands may not be on the social agenda for every UW student, they constantly and inevitably happen. Before the partners have the chance or the sobriety to discuss their sexual history with one another, the deed is done. Even if the couple uses protection, this seemingly inconsequential coitus is as dangerous as playing Russian roulette with a gun containing syringes of sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS and unwanted pregnancies.
Even though everyone has heard the lectures in health class, on public service announcements and even from campus programs such as Sex Out Loud, advice is more often than not unheeded. Students still screw and screw up, without regard for emotional and physiological repercussions. This must change. Young adults must not let caution be as disregarded as the warning tag on the mattress on which they wake up after a spontaneous night of passion.
Greater respect can be attained, not only for those who engage in sex, but those who do not, if greater personal responsibility is taken regarding sexual behavior. Being responsible is self-respect, and we must be at peace with our own personal choices before we can respect someone else's. Until then, continue wearing the shirts that proclaim ""good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere,"" but make sure that ""everywhere"" includes a stop to the clinic to get tested.
opinion@dailycardinal.com.
