The RUS rep present at the “Sex At Harvard” panel on Sunday contacted me after reading my write-up and said she’d pass along feedback or suggestions if I had any. The following is from the email I wrote back, blogged for all those prefrosh wondering if they made the right decision:

Though I definitely appreciated the diversity of the organizations invited to speak at the event, I don’t think they were very representative of the Harvard sex scene. True Love Revolution aside, every student group present espoused pretty radical beliefs. I’d even say that PCC and OSAPR are fairly liberal organizations, since contraception and sexual assault are inherently feminist issues. Though I suspect there’s a lot of overlap between my political views and those of the panelists, I hardly count myself as part of the Harvard mainstream. Most of the panelists are probably on the fringe politically, and half are gay. So while it’s commendable that the panel emphasized the diversity of experiences, I think it failed to represent the typical Harvard student, i.e. the non-radical who doesn’t view sex as political, who may not know a lot about intercourse, who participates in organizations like final clubs, who considers sex extraneous to college life, etc.

Obviously, there’s value to inviting people who think critically about sex to speak about it, but if the goal of the panel is to offer an accurate representation of the sex scene, then I felt much of what was discussed was irrelevant. The first question from the audience was about having overnight guests, which is a good indicator of what the attendees were interested in hearing about. Transexuality, sexual assault, coming out, etc. are all important issues to me personally, but I wonder how much most prefroshes are really going to care about any of the above. I was pretty surprised that no one addressed the point that 42% of Harvard students haven’t had anal, oral, or vaginal intercourse in the past year. I think that’s way more relevant to lives of most Harvard students.

In the future, a more balanced approach would be great. That doesn’t mean groups like QSA and RUS shouldn’t be represented, but I do think there’s a difference between having a radical student rep tell you, “The campus is actually pretty sexually conservative,” and having a sexually conservative student talk about why they view sex the way they do. Maybe that means having someone who’s not repeating the TLR party line explain why they’re a virgin. Maybe inviting a final club member is a necessary evil. Or maybe the speakers could simply be made more aware of what their audience is interested in, if they get to see audience questions beforehand.

Somewhat of a sidenote: I think the language used in the discussion was too academic and not very conducive toward promoting audience interaction. Panelists were using words like “discourse”, “intersectionality”, and “problematic”. I know that we’re used to speaking this way in section, but it’s probably pretty intimidating to high school seniors.