By Jesse Harlan Alderman The Associated Press
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Sometime between the founding of a student-run porn magazine and the day the campus health center advertised “Free Lube,” Harvard University seniors Sarah Kinsella and Justin Murray decided to fight back against what they see as too much mindless sex at the Ivy League school.
They founded a student group called True Love Revolution to promote abstinence on campus.
Harvard treats sex – or “hooking up” – so casually that “sometimes I wonder if sex is even a remotely serious thing,” said Kinsella, who is dating Murray.
Other schools around the country have small groups devoted to abstinence. On most campuses, they are religious organizations, but True Love Revolution is secular.
Some feminists, in particular, have criticized True Love Revolution’s message.
Harvard student Rebecca Singh said she was offended by a valentine the group sent to the dormitory mailboxes of all freshmen. It read: “Why wait? Because you’re worth it.”
“I think they thought that we might not be ‘ruined’ yet,” Singh said. “It’s a symptom of that culture we have that values a woman on her purity. It’s a relic.”
Others on campus have mocked the group. Murray said his friends take pleasure in loudly, and graphically, discussing their sex lives just to taunt him.
“On campus there is such a strong attitude of pluralism and acceptance, but then it doesn’t extend to this,” Kinsella said.
True Love Revolution members say Harvard has implicitly led students to believe that having sex at college is a foregone conclusion by requiring incoming freshman to attend a seminar on date-rape that does not mention abstinence, by placing condoms in freshmen dorms, and by hosting racy lecturers. (Harvard students have also launched H-Bomb, a magazine featuring racy photos of undergraduates.)
Dr. David Rosenthal, director of Harvard health services, disputed the notion that the university promotes sex.
“Some students may have a feeling that acknowledgment is condoning,” he said, “and it’s not.”
