What Cornell Teaches Its Students About Sex

You can’t open the news these days without seeing something about my school. I am a senior at Cornell, and my university has become ground zero for a series of difficult discussions about sex, rape, assault, and consent. Missing from the conversation is this: Cornell has a sex-education problem. For years, the school has promoted the perception that it is deeply invested in students’ welfare, even as it feeds them a constant stream of guidance on sexual activities that are fundamentally at odds with that goal. Cornell’s health service is shocking in its lewdness, offering students instructions for exploring bondage and supplying a checklist for identifying interest in various forms of group sex. Cornell has also hosted sex-toy raffles complete with demonstrations.

In 2019, the university’s official health authority, Cornell Health, authored a guide titled Sexual Pleasure: Finding the “Sweet Spot.” It opens by declaring that sex can make for a “terrific study break.” Students are encouraged to explore sexual fantasies and consider fetish gear. Exposure to pornography, Cornell assures us, is “totally normal,” and the guide directs students toward “ethical porn” and the “Feminist Porn Awards.” Today, this report is available inside a sexual-health resource library that has been “hand-picked by our staff.”

That same year, Cornell Health published Self-Exploration, a document that tells students they are “entitled to experience all the pleasure” their bodies can provide and instructs them to set aside private time in pursuit of that goal. Another guide, Sensate Focus, meticulously describes touching exercises between partners and states that “nudity is optimal.”