All Posts Tagged With: "sex"

The perils of co-ed washrooms

Co-ed bathroom photo by Andrew Tolson

From the 21st Maclean’s University Rankings. Get your copy today!

Some call it “the can,” others, the final frontier of gender equality: It’s the public washroom and it’s gone co-ed. Even though single-sex facilities are still the norm on the majority of Canadian university campuses, you’d be hard-pressed to find a school that doesn’t have at least one co-ed washroom—and it usually includes shower stalls. McGill, York University, the University of Toronto, Dalhousie, Mount Allison and the University of British Columbia are just a few of the “progressive” (or backwards, depending on your lavatorial leanings) co-ed washroom providers, earning the approval of campus feminists who view mixed facilities as a positive step towards full gender equality. Others, however, are not convinced. One 18-year-old Queen’s University psychology major says she was relieved to live in an all-girls dormitory solely because of the same- sex bathroom factor. Co-ed washrooms struck her as “grosser because boys used them,” says Jessica, now in her second year and living off-campus with a washroom of her own. “The girls’ ones were generally very clean.” Jessica would regularly make the five-minute walk back to her all-girls dorm from the co-ed dorm where many of her girlfriends lived, simply to avoid using the washrooms there. “It just smelled so much worse,” she says, before conceding, “maybe I just have bathroom phobia.”

Continue reading Dick and Jane go potty… together

Mingling of sexes “thwarts scientific achievement”: leader

Photo courtesy of Hamed Saber on Flickr

Iran’s higher education minister is studying the feasibility of separating men and women in university classes, labs and cafeterias, starting as early as September, reports The National, a newspaper from the United Arab Emirates.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, men and women have often segregated themselves in universities by sitting in separate rows.

That’s because many religious conservatives believe it’s immoral for men and women to mix in public. Ayatollah Safi Golpaigani, one of the country’s top religious figures, decreed in June that: “mingling of male and female [students] thwarts scientific achievements and causes great corruption.”

Shadi Sadr, a London-based lawyer and expert in Iran, told The National that the move is an attempt by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to rally his socially-conservative voter base ahead of the February 2012 elections.

Some students will surely be opposed. Tehran University students protested the requirement that men and women ride separately to class by boarding buses together in April. The university was also an important gathering place during the failed Green Revolution protests of June 2009.

Multiple daily downloads pushed him over the limit

Sad phone courtesy of Ron Bennetts on Flickr

Irish newspapers have picked up a rather odd warning from a student at University College Cork. The student told the Cork Student News that his peers should be careful about downloading pornographic videos onto their smartphones without have reading the fine print of their mobile contracts. The second-year food business student racked up $2,330 in data charges and subsequently dropped out of school, though he has since decided to return.

“When I signed up, I was misinformed,” the embarrassed student, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the newspaper. “They told me that unlimited internet was part of the deal. I asked the customer service agent repeatedly to make sure that this was the case, and was repeatedly told that it was.” In reality, there was an monthly limit, which he surpassed by downloading “multiple videos” each day during a period when he had no other internet access.

The phone company reduced his charges to $565 as a goodwill gesture.

Women who can get pregnant pay attention to sexual cues

Women who are ovulating are much better at guessing whether a man is gay or straight, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Toronto and Tufts University.

Scientists asked 40 heterosexual female students to judge 80 photos of men’s faces. Half of the men were gay and the rest were straight, but the groups were considered equally attractive. What’s interesting is that women judged the sexual orientation of each man more accurately during ovulation.

“What it really sort of hints at is [that] there are evolutionary reasons why women would pay attention to cues relevant for mating,” Nicholas Rule, a lead researcher, told The Toronto Star. “When women have a higher chance of getting pregnant they’re going to pay more attention to cues in the environment that would attend to that.”

President says single-sex residences will reduce binge drinking and sex

Photo courtesy of adpowers on Flickr

The president of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. says his school will return to all-male and all-female dormitories in September. Here’s his reasoning. “The two most serious ethical challenges college students face are binge drinking and the culture of hooking up,” wrote John Garvey in The Wall Street Journal Monday. “Here is one simple step colleges can take to reduce both binge drinking and hooking up: Go back to single-sex residences,” he writes.

His only evidence appears to be a study by Christopher Kaczor of Loyola Marymount University that shows students in co-ed dorms report binge drinking more than twice as often as students in single-sex housing, and that students in co-ed housing are significantly more likely to have had a sexual partner in the past year. What the article doesn’t mention is whether Kaczor’s study controlled for the fact that many students who live in single-sex dorms have chosen to live there precisely because they wish to avoid alcohol and sex.

Students turn to prostitution to pay bills: researchers

German researchers asked 3,200 students in three European cities whether they had undertaken sex work and whether they would consider doing so in order to pay bills, reports Reuters. More than a third of students in Berlin, where prostitution is legal, said they would consider sex work. In Paris the figure was 29 percent and in Kiev, Ukraine 19 percent agreed. Overall, four per cent of students said they had undertaken sex work, which includes prostitution, erotic dancing and on-line sex services.

Why Brigham Young University suspended its star basketball player

When Brigham Young University announced that it was suspending sophomore forward Brandon Davies for the closing weeks of a dream season by its men’s basketball team, many sports fans must have had thoughts of a flamboyant 51-year-old Irish Catholic who may be the greatest athlete in the annals of the school. Davies was punished for violating the Utah university’s strict honour code, apparently by having sex out of wedlock with his girlfriend. BYU, in theory, expects all students to live a “chaste and virtuous life” according to the rules of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—but Jim McMahon says it’s not so simple.

McMahon, whose colourful language and dress alone would have been enough to turn the honour code upside down, played at BYU for five years, starting out as the Cougars’ punter and going on to shred the record books as their quarterback. McMahon now recalls how BYU’s administration threw him out of the school with suspiciously convenient timing—the day after his last bowl game. “They said they had ‘just been informed’ that I was doing some things,” McMahon told Miami radio station WQAM last week. “You follow me around, you stake out my apartment. You don’t know what I’m doing? C’mon. They know what’s going on there.” The bon vivant Chicago Bears great, who re-enrolled at BYU last fall to pick up the handful of credits he needs to complete his degree, added that he “saw a lot of hypocrisy” at the university, saying of Davies that “some guys get caught, some guys don’t.”

That was 30 years ago, and McMahon, unlike Davies, was no homegrown star. All BYU undergraduates are bound by the honour code, which (unlike student-behaviour codes at most universities) sets standards for grooming, polite language and avoidance of addictive substances, including caffeinated beverages. The code applies on campus and off. But things are clearly a little different in practice for the few hundred non – Saints scattered among the school’s 34,000 students. Davies, a Mormon, grew up in Provo, home to BYU’s main campus, and led a local high school to two state titles. He is living the college experience under the unblinking gaze of his community, his church, and the administration of his university, all at once.

The loss of Davies represents a serious blow to the basketball Cougars’ chances in the NCAA Division I Championship—the annual orgy of gladiatorship and gambling more commonly known as March Madness, which begins on the 15th. The announcement of the suspension came hours after BYU was named America’s third-best team in weekly polls of reporters and NCAA coaches. The team is led by James “Jimmer” Fredette, a six-foot-two Mormon point guard from upstate New York who is expected to earn national player of the year honours. Fredette’s buffet of moves and devastating long-range shooting have made him one of the most cherished folk heroes in college basketball since the era of “Pistol Pete” Maravich. NBA star Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder called him “the greatest scorer in the world!!” in an admiring January tweet.

The six-foot-eight Davies has been one of the few plus-sized passing targets for Fredette and is the team’s top rebounder. In the first game after his suspension, BYU promptly lost 82-64 at home to unranked New Mexico as he watched glumly, wearing street clothes at the end of the bench. Literally dozens of other tournament-eligible teams will have lost good players to injury in the final weeks before March Madness, but the combination of Fredette’s national following and a slightly prurient media angle has turned Davies’s loss into melodrama. Fredette is in his final year of college eligibility and gives BYU, which last made the Elite Eight stage in 1981, its best ever chance at a Final Four appearance.

The drama emphasizes the unique challenges faced by a private, church-run school with a strong countercultural commitment to old-fashioned conduct. (See also: Notre Dame.) BYU is meant to be, among other things, an advertisement for the worldly excellence of the Latter-day Saints faith, and athletics are an ever-growing part of that enterprise. Davies, unlike Jim McMahon, could not easily be written off or accommodated hypocritically as a “rebel” and outsider. His misstep confronted his school with a tough choice: compromise the fate of a team on the verge of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, or consent to a slight but humiliating erosion of its principles. Thousands, including many who have no particular love for the Mormon faith as such, will be cheering for the Cougars to elude the horns of the dilemma.

Photos: By Bill Waugh/Reuters

After class lecture on human sexuality featured explicit act

An incident involving a live sex-toy demonstration at Northwestern University is being investigated by the school.

After class on Feb 21, psychology professor John Michael Bailey hosted a guest lecturer for about 100 students in his human sexuality course. The presentation was called “networking for kinky people” and was given by Ken Melvoin-Berg, who is part owner of Weird Chicago Tours, and who discussed sexual fetishes such as bondage and swinging.

At one point, the students were shown a video on the female orgasm, but two other guest speakers, Jim Marcus and fiancé Faith Kroll, believed it wasn’t realistic. After the students, who were attending the optional post-class lecture, were warned, the couple went on stage. After Kroll took offer her clothes, Marcus proceeded to use a sex toy on her. They had initially only intended to show the toy as part of a discussion.

According to the Chicago Tribune the device “looks like a machine-powered saw with a phallic object instead of a blade.”

Upon learning of the exhibition, Northwestern president Morton Schapiro released a statement that the university would be launching an investigation. “Although the incident took place in an after-class session that students were not required to attend, and students were advised in advance, several times, of the explicit nature of the activity, I feel it represented extremely poor judgment on the part of our faculty member. I simply do not believe this was appropriate, necessary or in keeping with Northwestern University’s academic mission.”

Professor Bailey defended the demonstration as educational. “The students find the events to be quite valuable, typically, because engaging real people in conversation provides useful examples and extensions of concepts students learn about in traditional academic ways,” he said in a Wednesday statement.

Kroll and Marcus also defended their explicit display. “What we did was not designed to titillate people, but to educate people,” Marcus told the Tribune. “I’m an exhibitionist. I enjoy the attention, being seen by other people. It was entertaining because there were a lot of curious minds, so that was cool,” Kroll added.

One student who witnessed the incident told the Tribune that it was certainly memorable: “It is probably something I will remember for the rest of my life. I can’t say that about my Econ 202 class and the material that I learned there.”

With more women at most schools, young men have never had so many dates

“If you strike out everywhere else, just come to the Mount,” says Cody Brown, a congenial second-year student at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. The reason is simple: the Mount’s student body is 79 per cent women. “It’s a great ratio,” says the 19-year-old enthusiastically. “A phenomenal ratio.”

Though the Mount is an extreme example, female-dominated campuses are an increasing reality at universities across the country. According to Statistics Canada, 57 per cent of the student body in universities is female. Of the 69 schools Maclean’s surveyed in its 2010 university guide, 24 institutions have a student body that’s over 60 per cent female. And it’s not just Mount Saint Vincent where the females make up more than 70 per cent of the population. It’s the same at NSCAD University and Université Sainte-Anne.

The trend is welcome news for women who want to focus on homework instead of being incessantly courted, and men who like all the attention. But as the female-to-male ratio skews, dating must adapt.

Brown, a clean-cut guy wearing a nondescript outfit of jeans, a white T-shirt and runners, notices “the Mount’s” ratio most on pub nights. “You’re treated like a VIP,” he says, adding that he hasn’t had to buy a drink yet. But the ratio isn’t always as rosy at it seems. The attention has its downsides. Namely, of the Mean Girls high school drama variety. “It’s crazy,” he says, “girls are at each other’s throats.”

For some girls at the Mount, the ratio is actually a blessing. Just ask the students at Birch 1*, the girls-only residence on campus. “It’s more studious,” says residence adviser Melanie Brister, 19, the result of its female-only environment, she explains. Brister says her roommates—many of them religious—think “guys are a distraction.”

Even students from one of the few remaining male-dominated schools, the University of Waterloo, are taking advantage of the growing female presence. Although men still outnumber women 57 to 43, students are turning lemons into lemonade. Matthew Cam, 20, a software engineering student at Waterloo, says one way to overcome the female drought is to choose parties strategically. For example, chemical engineering parties have more girls than software engineering parties. Who knew?

Cam’s software friends say an even better option is to walk over to Wilfrid Laurier University, just a kilometre away, which has plenty of coed revelries. At WLU, the male-female ratio is much more male-friendly, at 61 per cent women.

If there’s a campus where the skewed ratio appears to be overcome, it’s the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ont. (which, at 58 per cent female, is pretty typical). Nevertheless, it has a reputation for parties and the attendant hook-ups. The high-density residences, like the notoriously raunchy 1,250-person Saugeen-Maitland Hall, may be to blame. (There also happen to be four richly furnished bars on campus and at least seven major clubs on nearby Richmond Street.)

One thing is certain, they don’t shy away from sex. Just look at the residence cheers drilled into new students, says Devon Johnson. When the Western alumnus arrived in 2004, she learned the residence cheer that matches their mascot—a rooster. “The guys would go, ‘Who loves the cock?’ and the girls would call back, ‘We love the cock,’ ” says Johnson.

Krystle Ficker, 18, says the residence cheer is still alive. In fact, Western’s reputation precedes it so much that visitors ask her and her friends, “Are your dorms really ‘STI-ridden’?” and, “Do you get laid every night?”

If she gets too tired of all the attention, perhaps she should consider transferring to a place like Mount Saint Vincent, where the boys are few and far between. She may even want to consider living in Birch 5.

*The all-girls residence at Mount Saint Vincent University was incorrectly identified as Birch 5 in a previous version of this article.

University committee to make recommendation on whether condoms can be handed out during orientation week

Condoms might be available everywhere at St. Thomas University, in Fredericton, but a plan to hand them out to first-year students during orientation initially caused confusion over whether the university had a policy that prevented it. To clear up the misunderstanding, university president Dennis Cochrane struck a committee on student health that is expected to make a recommendation within days.

Update: Condom fiasco at an end

In July, the St. Thomas Students’ Union (STUSU) was told by Residence Life that they couldn’t include condoms in Welcome Week kits, alongside t-shirts, clip boards, and information about the campus. When STUSU sought clarification from the administration, it was discovered that no such policy existed, only a long standing convention, although condoms had been handed out in some previous years. It was also suggested to STUSU and reported elsewhere that the decision stemmed from the university’s roots as a Catholic institution, but the university denies that. Although the university originated as a religious institution, it is now a secular university.

Jeffrey Carleton, STU’s director of media relations, said the request to hand out condoms during Welcome Week was denied because condoms are available elsewhere on campus, including from a residence adviser, and because students have “more important” things to worry about during their first week. “Any student who wants [a condom] can just go ask for one . . . the feeling was that [Welcome Week] just wasn’t the appropriate time,” he said.

Student president Ella Henry says while condoms are indeed readily available, students might “feel embarrassed” about approaching a residence adviser for a condom. “It was about establishing a culture where safe sex is normal,” she said. “We have to recognize that students are going to have sex . . . They aren’t going to necessarily put that off.”

Although not all student unions distribute condoms during orientation week, it is widely practiced across Canada, including at the University of New Brunswick which has a Fredericton campus that is shared with St. Thomas.

The committee advising the president is composed of ten members representing various campus constituencies including four students. The committee will also make other recommendations regarding student health and wellness.