We’ve been keeping you up to date on the Yale Sex Week debacle, and there’s finally good news: Yale administrators have approved the proposal for Sex Week 2012! Back in November, the administration banned Yale Sex Week over the participation of the porn industry with some of the seminars and discussions. Needless to say, most of the students were not happy with the decision. After a bunch of complaints, President Levin allowed the directors of Sex Week to submit a new proposal to the administration. They really wanted it to happen as they felt it would benefit all students on campus, no matter what your sexual orientation is. The proposal was spot on, and it looks like it worked!

Last week, the administration approved the proposal and is allowing the use of Yale facilities. However, Yale will not be included in the name of the event. An email from Dean Mary Miller said although “some aspects of [the proposal] that do not seem to underpin our own educational mission,” the events have still been approved. The administration has not decided whether or not to provide financial support, which was requested in the proposal. The student directors said the week “will place a special emphasis on sexual health and female sexuality” but won’t stop talking about the controversial topics like pornography.

It’s also been announced in a press release that Anne Olivarius will be the Keynote Speaker for the event: “Ann Olivarius ‘77, first person to complete joint-degrees in the Yale Law School and the School of Management in three years, one of the first female Rhodes Scholars, and founding partner of the preeminent international corporate law firm McAllister Olivarius, will give Sex Week 2012′s keynote speech on sexual education and discourse as a means to prevent sexual violence.” She was a plaintiff in the 1980 Alexander v. Yale trial where students sued Yale for “alleged failure to provide a centralized grievance process for sexual harassment cases.” That case is similar to the one Yale is currently facing in violation of Title IX after the DKE fraternity scandal, which was filed by several students who feel Yale has failed in dealing with issues of sexual harassment and assault.

Maybe Sex Week’s comeback will inform the administration as well as the students.

Caitlin is a senior at the University of Alabama who has an obsession with cupcakes, coffee, and Harry Potter. She always has random fun facts on reserve and aspires to be a professional blogger,social media bug, and/or James Franco’s assistant. Follow her fabulous life @caitlincorsetti. You’re welcome!

Earlier this week, Sigma Phi Epsilon at the University of Vermont was suspended after new members responded to a fifteen question document. A questionnaire sounds harmless enough, right? Wrong. One of the questions was, “If you could rape someone, who would it be?”. Students at UVM held a rally on Thursday about the incident, and the suspension comes after over 3,200 students signed a petition requesting action against the fraternity. Sigma Phi Epsilon’s headquarters say that this is an isolated incident and it does not reflect the views of the fraternity, they did take action and are conducting an investigation.

This situation is reminiscent of the Yale Delta Kappa Epsilon scandal of October 2010 where members were led around campus chanting “No means yes, yes means anal.” Yale announced in May that they were suspending the chapter, but the scandal also resulted in the creation of the Marshall Committee and the subsequent banning of Yale Sex Week. While the UVM scandal has sparked conversations at UVM that “speak out against rape culture (evidently actively fostered by this UVM fraternity)” it’s also sparked a lot of conversations in support of the fraternity. Even though it appears the incident was isolated between a few individuals, it doesn’t change the fact that it encouraged rape.

I’m a part of my school’s Greek system, and I’ve seen several fraternities get kicked off campus for hazing violations including the Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter that my boyfriend at the time was in. It’s definitely difficult to see a brotherhood torn down, but there are consequences for actions. What’s surprising to me is the reaction of students, including many females, who are in support of the chapter as if there should be no repercussions for encouraging rape or even joking about it. Whether kidding or not, rape isn’t funny and this questionnaire was in poor taste. It got me thinking about our generation’s behavior.

I’ll admit straight up that I think Total Frat Move is hilarious, but sometimes I laugh at things and am shocked that I found it funny. It’s a reflection of the college culture that we live and breathe. We talk about fratdaddies and slampieces, and while it’s lighthearted and all in good fun, are we fostering the kind of behavior that we’ve seen in these publicized fraternity scandals? I think so. Maybe it’s about time we check ourselves if we want incidents like these to stop. Where does the change start?

I’m not sure exactly where, but as Ms. Norbury said in Mean Girls, we “all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it ok for guys to call you sluts and whores.” We as women get so offended by what men say, and by no means am I saying that we bring it on ourselves, but guys aren’t that in tuned to things. When they hear us calling our friends sluts, they think it’s okay to do the same. Then they take it up a notch, and then a few idiots do something stupid like talk about who they want to rape and it makes national headlines. So while we’re not the cause of these situations, maybe our generation needs a reality check about what’s funny and what’s not.

What do you think? Do college students need a reality check on behavior? Is UVM right in suspending Sigma Phi Epsilon? 

A few weeks ago we talked about Yale administrators banning Yale Sex Week, and it’s been a hot topic ever since. The Marshall Committee, which was put in place to help advise the university on dealing with sexual misconduct, advised President Levin to ban Sex Week. Other schools have sex weeks on their campuses, but the administration at Yale obviously felt that Yale Sex Week was becoming more about porn and having sex instead of being informative. Well, most students at Yale aren’t too happy about it and rightfully so.

Sex happens. Whether you’ve had sex or not, it’s a part of life. If sex and talking about sex makes you uncomfortable, then don’t get involved with talks about it. One of the most important things about sex is being informed, which is exactly what sex weeks do. So they had some porn stars there, big deal. The administration is missing the big picture: keeping students informed about sex. Not only is it about safe sex, but also queer culture and being accepting towards sexuality. It’s about consent and how to deal with sexual misconduct.

Well, President Levin is now allowing the student directors to propose a plan for Sex Week 2012 on the basis of free speech. They put together a proposal broken down into categories like relationships, psychology and biology, female sexuality, culture and sexuality, consent and communication, faith and sexuality, law and politics, sexual health, creative expression and performance, and pornography. Yes, pornography.

They state that they “envision a campus where self-loving students shape, articulate, and achieve compassionate and practical desires. This can only be accomplished if we provide a resource-filled and comprehensive sexual education that acknowledges and facilitates an understanding of desire and pleasure.” In aiming to make Sex Week 2012 as inclusive as possible they also “have not included a separate category of events for LGBTQ individuals because we are committed to making every event at Sex Week 2012 not merely ‘friendly’ but relevant to the LGBTQ members of our community. To fulfill this goal, we will work closely with each guest speaker to ensure that their event provides well-rounded information for the whole community regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity expression.” Basically, the student directors rocked the proposal, and hopefully the administration will approve it. They requested that they receive a decision by the end of this semester.

This gossip was the result of a quick catch up sesh I had with my friend after one of those “OMG—so much to tell youuu” texts. I’m sure y’all have had friends like this girl. Actually, scratch that, I’m sure y’all have BEEN this girl before. I know I have: you hookup, you overanalyze, and you wonder if people think you’re a slut, and then you hookup again. It’s like the water cycle… only less hydrating and more damaging to the morale.

And for certain guys, this cycle, in contrast to our menstrual cycle, is their fave. This can be evidenced by a 2008 photo of a few of Yale’s finest Zeta Psi frat boys in front of our Women’s Center holding up a sign that says “We Love Yale Sluts”— classy.

The incident was one of several that were targeted in a recent complaint by 16 Yale students against the administration “for its failure to eliminate a hostile sexual environment on campus, in violation of Title IX.” (Read more on that here.) Thus, the Office of Civil Rights is opening an investigation of Yale, and should they find anything incriminating, will revoke our federal funding.

The Yale Daily News broke the story on April 1st, so I choked on my cereal and laughed because I thought it was an April Fool’s Day joke. Perhaps it’s because I always laugh at inappropriate moments, or perhaps it’s because I am afraid of confrontation, but I didn’t see how suing our administration would make a sexist situation better. It seemed like a dumb idea and I had Spanish homework to do. And so, it flew off my radar.

That is, until CNN news crews and the New York Times went crazy and my mom called and voiced her concern about my sexual well-being. Which was awkward.

Obviously, I represent a different subset of the population than the people who filed the complaint. Like I mentioned above, I go through the “Am I a Slut?” cycle quite frequently yet still believe that the Title IX complaint would accomplish very little. However, that isn’t to say that we don’t deserve the complaint.

The complaint has legitimacy. It isn’t right for frat boys to go around objectifying women, and it isn’t right for those accused of raping girls to go without any consequences. In my experience, Yale has had shady (read: gossiped-about, but not factually supported) situations involving boys getting kicked out for sexual harassment, but then coming back to school later. And it has received much criticism for not putting harsher restrictions on frats after incidences such as the one mentioned above. But while the spotlight has been put on the sweating administration, maybe attention should be turned to the individuals.

Our administration promotes open discussion, available resources and education about equality. And so, as was expected, in response to the complaint, we all got sent an email about a new Advisory Committee on Campus Climate (filled with fat biographies of committee members) formed to check in on the sexual environment here and report on their findings. Additionally, while the taskforce did its work, Yale would have discussions with students and figure out what was going on.

And this is all perfectly lovely. Open discussion is wonderful, transparency in bureaucracy is always refreshing, and taskforces are great. Except, they can’t be the only answer. Because while taskforces do appear to make changes at a macro-level, they do very little at the micro-level.

Although the media and our administration and a fraction of our student population is getting riled up at the complaint, the taskforce will never be able fully get a handle on the problem, because it cannot address the “Am I A Slut?” cycle—that’s not an administration thing, that’s a cultural thing.

Ladies and gentlemen, despite recent media attention, I know that this problem is not just a thing at my school. I’m sure you’ve seen echoes of it at your school: girls feeling pressured to hookup with guys after being their dates to a formal, guys talking about who is easy, girls telling other girls that “it’s okay because you were drunk,” etc. If we actually want to put a full stop to this college-environment-induced sexual hostility, we need to start realizing that objectification is not okay just because we’re drunk, or because all of our friends think it’s fine.

People do stupid things sometimes, and some nameless administration BS can dull it, but it isn’t going to stop it. The most effective way of stopping it is for you, your best friend, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your roommates, whoever to a.) understand that something that they do, or a friend does, is not okay for the human morale, and then b.) not being afraid to talk about it. You don’t have to go Naomi Campbell on them, but lightheartedly point out their errors, let them know (or let yourself know) that you are judging their behavior. Most likely, they’ll start to change it.

On campus, some people are serious about the Title IX complaint, they discuss it in dining halls and go to the panels and Facebook chat friends about it—but from my perspective, a considerable number of people make a joke about it while they pregame, and then later on in the night go off and hookup with a rando—thus reinforcing the “Am I A Slut?” cycle.

Taskforces can dull the spikes of an outraged media, but they can’t change the nature of “OMG—so much to tell youuu” texts.

The air is crisp, the dorms are abuzz with “I’m going home!” and my suitemate and I are—feverish. Literally.

What started off as the both of us coughing slightly like dainty ladies a week ago has morphed into some kind of psycho illness that left me hacking and feverish, making me miss a.) Kelly Cutrone giving an inspirational speech during this leadership workshop I was supposed to attend and b.) A sikk (but not sick like me) tailgate before the Yale-Princeton game.

Here’s my question: Why isn’t Mommy here to deliver me ice water and bring me up dinner from the kitchen to my room? Answer: Because I’m a freaking adult now! And I need to suck it up! Or else I’ll turn into, like, Lindsay Lohan or something and wallow in my own existence until bodyguards come and carry me everywhere I need to be.

So as a mature woman (pah, let’s be honest), I have been attempting to take care of myself as best as possible. After getting the whining, calls to my mother for some much needed sympathy and more whining, of course. I have been sleeping. I have been stealing grapefruit and oranges like crazy from the dining halls. I have been drinking lots of water (clear pee is the goal, you guys). I have been skipping class (…I don’t wanna infect other people).

And none of it is really helping.

The one thing that I found that is true is this: my illnesses last longer in college. And I think this has to do with the dining hall system vs. having a kitchen downstairs in your house where your mom makes food. The dining hall is a five minute trek in the cold away from my dorm room. That, in combination with the fact that it’s already dark outside, our dining halls have been serving excessive amounts of squash lately, and having a fever destroys your appetite, means that I have not been eating a lot. Which is good for my freshman fifteen, but terrible for the whole “getting healthy” thing.

It also doesn’t help that I’m in close (very close) quarters with another diseased person who keeps passing her germs to my side of the room. Part of me wants to Clorox the room every day…but a bigger and sicker part of me doesn’t want to get out of bed and muster up the energy to do so.

Regardless of all that, I’m slowly healing. Painfully slowly.  The coughs are beginning to sound a little less morbid and now my voice is raspy, so I kind of sound like Miley Cyrus. And that’s pretty cool. Plus, I’m seeing my mom in 3 days, which should jump start this healing process instantaneously. She’s already promised to have the soup and movies ready, which means I’ll be healthy as an ox (no, I don’t get that cliche either) by the time Thanksgiving dinner rolls around.

[Meet Margaret, a freshman at Yale. We've been checking in with her every week to see what she's doing, who she's meeting and what new college surprises she's tackling (or freaking out about) as she embarks on the journey we call college. Or as I like to call it, the best thing since Trader Joe's Honey Greek Yogurt. That is, until midterms season hits, of course.]

So I’m new at this whole midterms thing. The idea that I’ve been more or less lounging around for the past 6 weeks and then – wham! – I’m hit with a test that’s worth 40% of my grade…that’s kind of crazy.

Needless to say, this past week has been an acne-inducing, sleep-lacking, chocolate-eating cram week. But, terrible as it was for my complexion and caloric intake, I have to say that this week has definitely taught me some things about studying.

First, it’s much easier to not stress about midterms if you actually know what’s going on in class. I’ve been going to class, but this was definitely problematic for a lot of my classmates. In a lecture of 400 people about something as non-stimulating as econ, it’s easy to doze off. But unfortunately, while you are dreaming about your next Halloween costume, your professor is actually saying important things. Even though my professor puts his notes online, so many of his notes are things where you have to fill in graphs and equations that you learn about in class. Bottom line, try your best not to fall asleep in class and then have to teach yourself everything the week before the exam.

Second, if you’re like me, you need to switch up your study places. The library treats me nicely – it’s quiet and there are comfy chairs – but after a while, I start losing focus. I find myself stalking my friend’s older sister on Facebook rather than studying the marginal revenue of labor and that’s when I realize that it’s time for a location change. Colleges have tons of other places to study besides the library and your dorm — common rooms, unused classrooms (the dry erase board makes them perfect for group study sessions), cafes. Sometimes all I need to do is find a place where there is no risk of running into someone that I know.

Third, sleep is actually kind of important, as are pre-sleep rituals. So this only sort of has to do with studying, but you know how you always are able to concentrate better when you feel refreshed? Studying’s the same way. You can’t focus well if you’re not well rested and in the same line of thought… while it’s so tempting to crash without washing your face or brushing your teeth, you feel so gross when you wake up. Push yourself to go spend 10 minutes in the bathroom to get yourself ready for bed.

Fourth, exercise outside, or at least go submerge yourself in nature. After 5 hours holed up in a library staring at a computer screen and your notebook, you are lacking some serious fresh air. There’s even this thing called the “biophilia hypothesis” that speculates that humans need nature and greenery in order to be happy. So tear yourself away from the computer screen, go outside, and take a walk.

And lastly, do the practice tests, problems, essays that your professors give you. Pretend you’re in test taking mode, too. It’ll really show you what you need to study and what you already know. Then, look at your notes. If you look at your notes for too long, there’s a tendency to fall asleep. And then you’re not studying.

Midterm season is a stressful time for all of us, do you have any tips to relieve the suffering?

Not suprisingly, this “hilarious” initiation has caused quite a ruckus on campus. The president of the fraternity, Jordan Forney, apologized about the incident, claiming it was a “lapse of judgment.”

To me, it seems more like a “lapse of maturity, intelligence or respect for themselves or women.”

As a recent Lemondrop article mentions, it’s highly unlikely that this incident was a game-time decision. The older fraternity brothers knew exactly what they were doing and where they wanted to do it.

The extraordinarily degrading and misogynistic chants are irksome and naturally arouse disgust amongst females nationwide, but particularly to those on Yale’s campus. The Yale Women’s Center is calling for disciplinary action to be taken against the fraternity. My fingers are crossed that their pleas will be heard.

I guess, at the end of the day, the main shocker is that this event occurred at Yale University, one of the most prestigious Ivy League schools in America. These kids are supposed to be the cream of the crop, the shining new generation of U.S. leaders. Instead, the school has housed a group of chauvinistic men who find something as revolting as rape funny.

Turns out scoring perfectly on the SATs won’t keep you from scoring perfectly on the “I’m a Tool” scale. Let’s hope Yale holds this chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon accountable for their disgraceful and demeaning acts.

What do you think? If this had happened on your campus, how would you want it to be solved?

[Meet Margaret, a freshman at Yale. We've been checking in with her every week to see what she's doing, who she's meeting, and what new college surprises she's tackling (or freaking out about) as she embarks on the journey we call college. Or as I like to call it, the best thing since Trader Joe's Honey Greek Yogurt.]

In high school, I had a clear label. I was Ms. Student Government, Ms. Good Grades, Ms. Overachiever. And even though all of our years of primary schooling have told us that labels are totally, totally terrible and that we should define people by their true selves and inner lights, etcetera, Oprah wisdom, etcetera, Oprah wisdom, I’m just going to say this: I heart labels.

Because for some reason, rather than being stifled and held down by my defined structural cocoon of a label, I ultimately felt freer to be anyone I wanted to be. Completely ridiculous, right? Yeah.

By being known as the Smart Girl, I no longer had to prove that part of myself. It was like, I could be flexible. I could get a B on a paper, I could forget to do my homework, I could bomb an English test, but I would still be known as the Smart Girl. I mean, I guess it’s kinda like how Paris Hilton could potentially save puppies and ace an LSAT, but she always has that Party Girl image. Except, the opposite, you know?

It’s like, when you have a defined label, all you need to do is be like, “But wait, that label is not all that defines me.” And wham, you can do whatever you want and you surprise people because obviously Real You is so much more interesting than Labeled You.

So now, I’m in this totally awkward phase of being label-less. Now, according to Tyra and self-help books everywhere, I should be in a state of bliss. I mean, no one is judging me based on…anything, right? I should feel free to do whatever I want.

But I feel so trapped, you guys! Because now whatever step I take defines me—it’s like, I don’t have that fallback of Smart Girl anymore, because a) everyone here is smart, and b) I totally still have left over Senioritis from last year, and, let’s face it, I definitely got a C on my first Spanish assignment. So now I’m just like everyone else… or worse, Bad Spanish Girl. And that just doesn’t sit well with me.

I think I’ll eventually figure things out and get comfortable with being whoever I am; for now though, I’m recognizing how much I depended on labels throughout my formative years.

Goodbye Smart Girl, hello _______?

[Follow Margaret's freshman adventures right here.]

[Meet Margaret, a freshman at Yale. We've been checking in with her every week to see what she's doing, who she's meeting, and what new college surprises she's tackling (or freaking out about) as she embarks on the journey we call college. Or as I like to call it, the best thing since dark chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter cups.]

At my old high school, we were never served veggie burgers, nor did we have to choose between vegan and non-vegan options in the cafeteria. I’m from Cincinnati, a city that boasts about its chili (which is really just a runny sauce on top of noodles…). Needless to say, the infinitesimal number of students who identified with vegetarianism at my school only did so for religious reasons. And some of them cheated.

Keeping that in mind, entering the dining hall at my college was like entering the land of some kind of lotus-eating, vegetarian haven, or, in my case, a carnivore’s personal version of hell. It’s not that they don’t serve meat; they do. But they also serve various other reinterpretations of meat: tofu ravioli, lentil hamburgers, vegan minestrone soup.

Upon seeing these, I became bitter and questioned why tofu ravioli was necessary when ravioli is obviously meant to be stuffed with beef and cheese (at least according to my man, Chef Boyardee). Didn’t all the vegetarians here realize what they were missing out on? Chicken tenders and steak? Bacon and sausage links? What was the point of all this? It’s not like one vegetarian will directly save the life of a cow or singlehandedly better animal welfare. Vegetarianism is pointless.

At least that’s what I’d always thought. But much like my drinking habits, my study habits and my feelings towards sex, being in college has made me re-think the way I eat.

By being thrown into a new environment where I’m exposed to new people, new ideals and a whole lot of  vegetarians, I’ve been forced time and again to re-evaluate what I’ve always known. And most recently, I’ve begun to reconsider the food that I put into my mouth. Whereas before I used to think that vegetarianism was a black and white issue – you either eat meat because it’s tasty or you don’t because you think cows are cute – I’ve learned that it’s so much more.

It’s a fact that Americans didn’t used to eat as much meat as we do today. Really, if you think about it (or Google it, like I’ve been doing constantly lately), the amount of meat we consume today really isn’t natural. And medical reports don’t lie; meat can definitely up your cholesterol and is one of the main contributing factors to our high rate of heart disease in this country.

Now, I’m not sure if I could go completely meatless (I like chicken tenders too much), but I’m definitely cutting back. And in the end, that’s not even the point. While this specific change is about tofu and lettuce, it is only one of many changes I’ve noticed since I got to Yale a mere month ago. Yes, I’m still staying true to who I am as a person, but the naive, sheltered Cincinnati girl I was before coming here is almost unrecognizable. With every new experience I have, class I take, reading assignment I complete and person I talk to, I’m learning more than I ever have before.

And I’m becoming a much more tolerant and open-minded person because of it.
I’m even eating (and enjoying!) tofu ravioli, and those are words I never in a million years thought would come out of my bacon-loving mouth.

Celebs who should step away from the Cuervo.

Sad news for the Osmond family.

Yale talks sex.

The 8 stages of beer drinking.

Outrageous style predictions for 2010.

Check out that rock on Simon Cowell’s future wife.