College porn newest trend on campuses

http://media.www.daily49er.com/media/storage/paper1042/news/2007/03/06/Opinion/Our-View.College.Porn.Newest.Trend.On.Campuses-2760269.shtml#cp_article_tools When you think of a college-operated sex magazine, what do you think would be in it? Pages and pages of porn, right? Maybe a feminist poem depicting the life and times of a vagina? The newest vibrators on the market? The answers to the above questions are a resounding yes, yes and yes. According to an article in the March 3 issue of The New York Times Magazine, titled "Campus Exposure" sex magazines have been popping up in some of the most prestigious college campuses around the nation. Harvard, Columbia and Boston University, among others, all have their own sex magazines, with names ranging from the innocent H Bomb to the blunt Boink. So how do these naughty publications come to life? With the help of university officials in some cases, in others, with willing outside participants.In Harvard's case, it came easy. The university's Committee on College Life approved the magazine and controversially granted $2,000 in startup costs by the Undergraduate Council. The magazine boasts both a faculty adviser and an adult champion. Quite a contrast from say, Boston U's unapologetically graphic sex magazine, Boink, which some call "user-friendly porn." Unsurprisingly, this magazine is the most popular and commercially ambitious of the pack. It costs $7.95 and has a circulation of 10,000 and on top of all that, it actually pays its contributors.But are these magazines merely another way for oversexed college kids to exploit themselves or are they actual art forms, exemplifying freedom of expression and sexual liberty? It depends on who you ask.Many college students will point out that we are the generation of the sexually exposed - from back in the day when Madonna music videos stilled caused considerable controversy to today's sexually explicit YouTubers, we are constantly bombarded with sexual images in the media. It wasn't that long ago when young men used to hide their copies of Playboy Magazine under their mattresses and the glamorous women posing in them appeared to be the Hollywood elite. Nowadays, the people posing in sex magazines are your neighbors, your classmates, your friends.According to the article, Alecia Oleyourryk, founder of Boink Magazine, said, "Sex is everywhere, and it's always been everywhere for this generation. A body is a body is a body, and I'm proud of my body, and why not show my body? Maybe it's like, I'm going to carry this around and be proud of it and say: Look how I looked then! How hot was I? It's not like 'The Scarlet Letter' anymore. It's a badge of honor."Obviously not everyone feels that way. Some participants admit that there's a stigma attached to them after participating in such an unusual endeavor.According to the article, Aaron Foster, a Boston U undergrad, met a former Boink model, Anna Lee and they had a "whirlwind thing" but then he stopped calling her. "It was a weird situation," Foster said. "She's a porn girl, so ...I don't know. I assumed she wasn't really looking for much from me. I'm a guy. There's a lot less stigma attached to it. A chick, people think 'slutty,' whereas a dude gets associated with male bravado."It's a good thing these publications stay on campus, right? What would happen if everyone knew you as "the porn girl?" According to the article, Sarah Fraser, editor of Squirm, says "We try to limit unwanted exposure as much as we can. It's one thing to know you're posing nude or writing erotica for an insulated campus, and understandably quite another to know it's being disseminated widely."This isn't the first time sexual exploration has gotten considerable attention. Sexuality in college has often had a political background component, like back in the '60s, with slogans proclaiming us all to "make love not war." In 1990, women at Radcliffe (then still a separate institution from Harvard) had a magazine called "Lighthouse" where they wrote incredibly personal sexual confessions to their fellow sisters. Those days are gone. With this new crop of sexually liberated ladies, any tolerance of emotional vulnerability has disappeared. In its place are graphic photographs, angry confessionals and editorials about crystal-encrusted dildos. So what do we Cal State Long Beach students think of all this? Well, it seems to us that when dealing with this sort of sexual expression, there's a fine line between artistic nudity and pornography. One can write an article discussing sexuality and it doesn't have to be lewd and vulgar. We are in college and we're here to explore, to make noise, to have our voices be heard. If a sex magazine is a way for people to do that, then props to them.