With Valentine’s Day approaching on Saturday, sex seems to be a hot topic, causing a breakout of lingerie deals and reservations at restaurants. But when it comes to lovemaking, it’s hard to believe the statistics and to ignore common misconceptions.
MSU houses a vibrant youth of more than 40,000 students, which is a pretty big sea to fish from when it comes to dating. Most students know not only of their own sex lives, but the details about their friends’, too. With personal experiences in mind, it is easier to question the validity of any overall sex consensus.
Erica Phillipich, a health educator at Olin Health Center, dropped some surprising numbers. She said that a quarter of MSU students have not had sex in the last school year. She also said that 75 percent of those doing the deed are doing it with only one person.
This semester there are 44,422 enrolled students. If the statistics are correct, then 11,106 students are not having sex at all. This leaves 24,987 people having sex with only one partner out of the 33,316 students who have sex.
Certain questions come to mind regarding this high percentage and how this information is obtained. Is having sex limited to penetration? What about oral sex? Some people have no problem admitting that they have multiple partners, while others are not proud of this fact and may choose to forget about that one-night stand.
Simply assuming that people are apt to lie about their sex lives makes this a questionable statistic. From a moral standpoint, some may be impressed with the 36,093 people who are either celibate or intimate with their one-and-only.
Hypothetically, Sally took this survey, and said that she had only one partner.
Sally doesn’t mention that she cheated on her boyfriend the week before by being intimate with someone else without penetration. She also doesn’t mention that three months prior, she also had one partner. That was her previous boyfriend, though.
If viewing this survey from a moral standpoint, Sally’s behavior is distasteful, degrading the fact that she is sexually active with one person.
Viewing the survey from a health standpoint, while considering contraceptives, sexually transmitted diseases can be transmitted from oral sex. Therefore Sally is not practicing the healthiest sex life, either.
Regardless of how this survey is viewed, 75 percent simply seems too large of a number to be true. The fact that this is a shocking statistic implies that sexual intercourse is part of our culture, and that we all know people who may have extra-active sex lives.
It might be a misconception that all college students are sleeping around, but the high statistic of how many students are monogamous seems unrealistic. The survey’s suggestion that more than half of our campus is sleeping with only one person may be a result of respondents bending the truth.
No matter how many partners a student has, especially the extra-active, be careful. Sex comes with responsibility.
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