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Monday, June 7, 2010

The Answer Sheet - Student sex mag at unlikely school: U of Chicago

The Answer Sheet - Student sex mag at unlikely school: U of Chicago

Student sex mag at unlikely school: U of Chicago

This item might not be worth reporting if it involved another school. But a student-run sex magazine at the University of Chicago, which has long had the unfair reputation of a school where fun goes to die, rates a mention.
The magazine, 200 copies of which are expected to be distributed in the next few days on campus (but not online), is a revival of a publication that existed for four years before it stopped in 2007, according to theindependent student-run Chicago Weekly Online.

In the last decades student-run sex magazines have appeared on a number of college campuses. Two years ago, Rice University was graced with the first edition of “Open Magazine,” a “literary sex magazine” that includes poems, news stories, essays, photos and graphics on sex and sexuality. The third volume was published last April.

But it is not a natural mental leap to go from the University of Chicago, where serious students go to do serious studying, and a sex magazine run by and for students.
Senior Jackie Todd decided to revive “Vita Excolatur,” though, as might be expected, she found it somewhat difficult to persuade students to pose nude and talk honestly about sex and sexuality for print.
Some who did participate later asked for their nude pictures to be withdrawn or pseudonyms used, citing fear of being found out later in life by employers (which, incidentally, is far less likely than being found on Facebook where too many young idiots, I mean, people still don’t grasp as they post ridiculously inappropriate material online).
The magazine’s name comes from the school’s motto, “Crescat scientia; vita excolatur,” which means, “Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched.”
“In an appropriately loose translation, the Latin phrase 'vita excolatur' means 'the life well lived'. It also moonlights as the title of a sex &