A Loughborough student survey surrounding sex and relationships, the bits people may not openly share with their friends, was a topic I always hoped we could cover in Label when I joined the editorial team in October.
People’s ‘number’ has always been something that seemed to concern any girls I knew far more than the guys, so some of the sexist comments received in the survey such as “number only matters if you are a girl” or “girls should never have slept with more than one person” were by far not the most surprising results the survey received.
At first, finding out that nearly a quarter (24%) of people who have been in a relationship have cheated on their partner did come as a shock. In hindsight however, when considering the relationships you know that have broken down at university and the relevant reasons, it may not be a statistic that is far off from the rest of the student population.
However, with 76% of single people saying they would like a relationship, you have to wonder if a cheating statistic that high would put them off. Maybe it should also be considered how many of the cheaters are the result of long distance relationships? Not that this should be taken as any sort of excuse.
Going back to the answers to what ‘number’ was too high, I think 10-20 was fairly expected, as well as some comments such as “depends on circumstance” as many would consider university a very different world to any other time in your life.
The results do however make the average number in Loughborough collated by studentbeans.com (3.9) seem rather low, but if we think of that as a mode between two extremes, in the survey ranging from 0-57, the lows may balance out the highs and show there really is no number that’s ‘normal’.
Loughborough were ranked 51st in the studentbeans.com survey which ranked universities by the average number of sexual partners per student. University of Glamorgan topped the list with 10.9 above UWIC (10.6) and University of Brighton (9.5) in second and third respectively.
I spoke to some students around campus to find some more reaction to the Label Sex and Relationship survey:
“I wasn’t that surprised by the results, it’s university people cheat but it’s stupid of people to say there is a ‘number’ that would put them off. Everything depends on circumstance and university is different to anywhere else.”
(Male second year)
“Well… if the number of sexual partners that puts people off is above 10 then I’ve got no hope!”
(Male Third year)
“Quite shocked about the number of sexual partners bit, but it’s also quite reassuring, not at all shocked about how many people had had one night stands though!”
(Female second year)
“If that high an amount of people are having one night stands, I think people should be more concerned than they appear to be with their previous sexual history. Being a university isn’t an excuse to sleep around.”
(Female first year)
What do you think of the results? Share your opinions below (comments require verification and will not appear immediately).
