She specifically requested a gossipy roommate on her freshman housing application form

     I have a piece of sobering news for pimple-faced adolescent boys inundated with movies (porn), magazines (porn), and television shows (porn) that titillate with images of collegiate girl-on-girl action. Turns out those college girls may actually be *studying* instead of getting it on with each other. Studying something decidedly unsexy like Entomology or 19th Century Victorian Literature. At least, this is according to the New York Times, which recently published the results of a study suggesting that women with bachelor's degrees were actually less likely to have had a same-sex experience than those who did not finish high school.

     The study, conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, found that of the 13,500 women surveyed, almost 10 percent of women ages 22 to 44 with a bachelor's degree reported having had a same-sex experience, compared with 15 percent of those with no high school diploma. Women with a high school diploma or some college, but no degree, fell in between. Although 13 percent of women overall reported same-sex sexual behavior, only 1 percent identified as gay, and another 4 percent as bisexual (let's hear it for heteroflexibility, ladies).

     Although the study seems to debunk the popular perception that college women are playing footsie under the table while lunching with their girlfriends and hosting scantily-clad pillow fight parties, the Times offers a variety of possible reasons for the head-scratching results. One theory, proposed by Dan Savage, a gay sex columnist in Seattle, is that the LUG ("lesbian until graduation") phenomenon may be overrepresented by the vocalness of female students  seeking attention for their sexual exploration and marginality. As Savage points out, "A lot of them are out to prove something and want their effort to smash the patriarchy to be very visible." Another theory holds that maybe our stereotypes are just behind the times, and with gay relationships so much more common throughout society, college campuses may have lost their status as the "privileged site" for womens' exposure to different kinds of sexuality. Along these same lines, we may just be following Hollywood's and the media's lead in assuming that gay couples are all upper class white professionals and ignoring the throngs of homosexual ethnic minorities and working-class couples. Whatever the case may be, it seems that college campuses are not the bastions of experimentation once believed.

     Which leads me to a story relayed to me by a friend of a friend of a friend...anyway...this boy, we'll call him "Marco", of long flaxen hair that would make the girls jealous, was lounging in bed with his girlfriend in their co-ed dorm. The lights were on but the two were fast asleep. A well-known conservative guy on campus, we'll call him "Roger", walks in on them and starts exclaiming to his friends that he had just walked in on two lesbians engaged in sexual intercourse (o.k., he used more select words). The bottom line: Maybe we just see what we want to see.

     I know what you're all thinking....But those same-sex communal dorm showers?! Keep watching your movies, boys.

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