The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/sex/page/4/)
The second iteration of The Sun’s annual love and relationships survey offered the insights into the more intimate side of student life, including relationship statuses, hookup habits and dating experiences.
My first time having good sex was in the desert. My then-boyfriend, Desert Not-So Solitaire, and I waited until it was dark, then snuck partway down a trail at Capitol Reef and stretched out a blanket over the burnt orange sand. The stars were so bright above us. The sky seemed to stretch all the way down to our feet. We’d had sex a few times before, but the act was still new and fumbling for me, often accompanied by discomfort or pain.
The clock tower is lit up with a magenta heart, a smattering of invitations to themed galas and club parties abound. It’s Valentine’s Day at Cornell and the Sun surveyed over 800 students — asking questions about relationships, love and sex.
Sex, cuddling and blank walls?!?
Sex and solving mathematical problems are the same process. Sometimes they are surprisingly quick, inducing a moment of ecstasy but an ultimately unfulfilling experience. Other times, you can try for hours with no progress on the floor of a study room in PSB until you inevitably realize that cumming with a condom just isn’t an option for some people. Even though you know the person you’re with hasn’t gotten tested, you’re still willing to trust them because they have an IUD — and because you haven’t touched a breast since 10th grade English class during a haunting read-aloud of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Generally, however, as you grow in either mathematical maturity or sexual ability you learn your needs and what problems you have the potential to solve or, in my case, how to eat pussy and smash.
On Oct. 23, The Sun’s headline read “Near-Naked Cornell Runner Attacks 2 Women, Threatens to Rape Them After Taking ‘Acid.’”
I remember reading that. I released an exasperated puff and thought to myself, “I cannot believe that this happens at Cornell.” As I pondered it more, however, I realized, obviously this happens at Cornell. In fact, I’m surprised (but grateful), we haven’t seen worse. We live in a world of athletes dropping acid and stumbling bleary-eyed around parties preying on freshman girls.
I was in CTB last week finishing up an essay when the song “Slow Motion” by Trey Songz came up. Normally, a throwback track like this wouldn’t incite so much nostalgia and excitement in me, but this song took me back to one of my favorite hook up memories. The summer before I began Cornell, I went from having my first kiss to showing up to my summer fling’s house wearing nothing but lingerie and high heels. Walking from his driveway to the front door, I remember that song bursting from inside of the house and my heart racing in anticipation of his surprise when he opened the door. He went absolutely crazy.
To the Editor:
We are writing in regard to the recent guest column, “Being a Graduate Student in a Harvey Weinstein World at Cornell University,” to emphasize that sexual harassment or coercion of any kind has no place at Cornell. The author is absolutely correct that graduate students and, indeed, all members of the Cornell community should be protected from sexual coercion and that academic success should never be linked to such pressures. For that reason, it is important to be aware that Cornell Policy 6.4 clearly prohibits such misconduct. That policy defines “Sexual Coercion” as follows:
“To obtain compliance with sexual acts by using physically or emotionally manipulative actions or statements or expressly or implicitly threatening the person or another person with negative actions. Examples of sexual coercion include statements such as “I will ruin your reputation,” or “I will tell everyone,” or “your career (or education) at Cornell will be over.”
The policy also defines Sexual Harassment as follows:
A form of protected-status harassment that constitutes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other oral, written, visual, verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that unreasonably interferes with the individual’s work or academic performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working or learning environment under any of the following conditions:
Submission to, or rejection of, such conduct either explicitly or implicitly is (1) made a term or condition of an individual’s employment or academic status, or (2) used as a basis for an employment or academic decision affecting that person; or
The conduct is sufficiently (1) persistent, severe or pervasive, and (2) has the purpose or effect of altering the conditions of an individual’s employment or academic pursuits in a way that a reasonable person would find abusive, hostile, or offensive.
From the painfully awkward day my parents and I had the “Sex Talk,” I knew exactly how I wanted to lose my virginity. It would be magnificent — a combination of all of the steamy sex scenes I had secretly watched on the 2 p.m. daytime soap operas. A warm, candle-lit room with a plush bed and silky white sheets, rose petals sprinkled around the room in a shape of a heart, and bubbly Dom Perignon awaiting my arrival. My future boyfriend would be gentle and making love would be beautiful. Growing up with these elaborate expectations and years of my parents reinforcing their conservative point of view on my virginity, it was no surprise that I was on the verge of graduating from college and had never had sex.
It’s Sunday morning at 11 a.m. and I roll over, hand slapping my phone to turn off an alarm that is blasting through the room and ringing in my ear, like God himself has placed a marching band on my nightstand and they are determined to play until my brain gives out. I need coffee and to figure out how to get the 190 lb man spread-eagle across the bed next to me home so I can actually finish the problem set I said I’d do on Thursday. A text sits unread at the top of my lock screen as I finally figure out how to shut the alarm off. “Did you have a good night and did you hook up with him?”
I start to write out a text explaining that I didn’t hook up with him as we had only made out and talked until 2 a.m., and then passed out unceremoniously on top of the blankets of my bed. Then I realized maybe that was a hookup.