Sex "trade" on YOUR College Campus???

I read a very interesting article on CNN entitled " Bartering sex for stuff and services," which immediately caught my eye because this is just not an article you expect to be plastered on the front page of a major news organization. Maybe a new marketing gimmick to suck in our age group?

The main point of the article deals with how men and women use a type of system in which they exchange sex for various help and for various items. One woman claimed to have been pursuing a trip into the very dangerous Amazon rain forest but, was unable to find a guide that would take her. So she found a nice indigenous boy that could do all of the jungle things like, cutting down trees, fishing, making houses so that she could have that experience. She's said "and of course we had sex for two weeks" so that he could get his "experience" too. "It was a good barter both ways," she says. "I got to stay in the jungle, and he got to have sex with a cute, young American girl."

The other part of the article was something that related more to us as college students. They did a poll at the university of Michigan of 475 undergraduates and found some pretty interesting results. They found out that of a survey of people from 17 -26 that 27 percent of the men and 14 percent of the women who weren't in a committed relationship had offered someone favors or gifts. Some things listed were "help prepping for a test, laundry washing, tickets to a college football game." I know that tickets for Michigan football games are hard to come by, but really???

I guess the part that bothered me the most was how it was targeted towards our age group, like we are the only ones that partake in such adventures. The girl mentioned above said that it happened in 2000 and that she was 27 at the time the article was written. My calculations put that at her being around 19 - 20 years old. So is our age group the only ones that partake in these kind of activities? Or is this an article directed at older individuals that take particular joy in reading about how corrupt youth society is today?

My reaction was that how is this any different than the "obvious" couple that has a 34 year old woman with a 69 year old guy. Why is something like that considered "gold digging" and if it has to deal with youths it is a "sex bartering" system. Has anyone heard or seen this on campus? I obviously have not been hanging out with the right people then. :)

Article URL : http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/08/25/sex.for.stuff/index.html