As Georgetown students find their weekends drawing to a close, they prepare themselves for a popular Sunday night ritual: “Sex & the City,” 30 minutes of uninterrupted instant gratification that airs on HBO at 9 p.m. It is amusing and airy, a welcome distraction during such an uncertain and tenuous time.
While most of us readily indulge our appetitive instincts on Sunday night, when the alarm goes off the next morning we all find ourselves back in the real world. Well . most of us.
It seems that one Georgetown senior is attempting to live the New York City life of glamour. I was shocked Sunday morning to open the Washington Post and find an article entitled, “Georgetown University’s Sex Scribe.” It appears that our resident Sexpert has made it into the papers yet again. Senior Julia Baugher poses for a publicity shot as she delves into a copy of the Kama Sutra while playing with her pearl necklace. I’m sure that her professors wish she would devote half as much time to her history homework. The Post article is not celebratory of Baugher’s journalistic talents, but instead promotes her image as a sexual icon of the university. Baugher has transformed herself into a miniature Carrie Bradshaw by following a fictional character’s views on sex and relationships through a series of sexual advice columns that appear each week in THE HOYA.
Now while I admire her entrepreneurial instincts, peddling “sex talk” as journalism seems to dodge more pertinent issues in the lives of many college students. Whether or not this is news to Baugher, every student does not find him or herself falling under her categorical assumptions involving personal choice, dating and sex. Baugher not only tries to persuade her readers that booty calls, one-night stands and other sexual escapades are fulfilling, but she does so by disrespecting those who choose not to engage in such behavior. I wonder if Baugher has given any thought to how her self-proclaimed authority might offend others. In a previous column addressing booty calls, Baugher ignorantly makes up a statistic to encompass all Georgetown students based on the people sitting at her Darnall lunch table. Her results conclude that 65 to 99 percent of the student body has made, answered to or considered a booty call. Immediately following, she charmingly addresses that other one percent by wishing them luck in the priesthood.
Baugher’s entire attitude regarding relationships reeks of cliches and predictable stereotypes surrounding college students and sex. Baugher talks about sex as if it were an innate gift of knowledge that she has graciously bestowed upon the Georgetown community. While some of Baugher’s topics, such as long distance relationships and casual dating, are legitimate to many college students’ lives, her assumptions that most or all students engage in promiscuous and random sexual acts proves her lack of maturity and knowledge. For someone who is supposedly open-minded, she certainly has her eyes closed.
If her intention was to catch her audience’s attention, she has succeeded far beyond expectation. While Baugher might feel as though she has broken bounds by voicing her new and fresh theories on college sex, she has instead built a barrier between mature adulthood and adolescent ignorance. Now that the nation has read Baugher’s words and seen her image as a general depiction of the Georgetown University student, Baugher has single-handedly set us back. For many seniors on the brink of graduation and the start of a new life, Baugher has just made it even more difficult for students to crack preconceived notions of the typical college student. She has zeroed in on the weaknesses of adolescence to give in to temptation and consumption and magnified them. Not only has Baugher flaunted herself, but she has also debunked Georgetown as an institution of academic and moral integrity.
Cara Tarone is a senior in the College.
