Sex at Columbia University

Bjorn posted a link to a New York Daily News article with the headline "Wild Sex 101."

It's about the S&M, sex toys and nude and sex parties that go on at one of the nation's most elite schools, sometimes on school property.

The article details one such party:

Late on the night of Nov. 13, a Daily News reporter sat in room 303 of Hamilton Hall, a venerable classroom building where Columbia students have studied Poe, Plato and Plutarch for nearly 100 years.

As a female student volunteer stood facing the blackboard, and two dozen Columbians watched, a lecturer who identified himself only as Dov flogged her repeatedly with leather whips, rubber hoses - and a cat-o'-nine-tails.

As unusual as that may sound, there really isn't much shocking here-- you'd expect kids with raging hormones to be raging sex fiends. I remember the existence of a co-ed nude study group on campus when I was a student. There were probably S&M clubs but I was too naive at the time to have noticed them.

But the real surprise of the article is buried at the end. Quote of Note:

So does anything go at Columbia? Actually, no. Flogging and bondage are accepted, but the school apparently draws the line at another form of communication between the sexes: love letters.

They were good enough for Cleopatra, who sent them to Mark Antony, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who exchanged them with his wife, Zelda. But Columbia University Health Services lists love letters as a form of nonphysical sexual harassment, according to its Web site.

Let me see if I got this right: I can flog my significant other in front of the student body, on school property, but I can't send him a love letter after?

Gimme a break.