Hammonasset Beach State Park is located at 1288 Boston Post Rd. in Madison, CT. Weekday fees are $14, $20 on the weekends and $10 after 4 PM. It doesn’t open until May 21, though, so there are other options unless you’re a senior or sticking around until commencement.

Gulf Beach is exit 39A off of I-95 in Milford, and admission is only $5 per day, while Bradley Point Beach is exit 42 in West Haven, for $10/day.

Silver Sands is exit 35 off of I-95, and features swimming and saltwater fishing, in addition to Charles Island, “location of Captain Kidd’s buried treasure.” Admission is free, but Silver Sands creeps me out (though I’ll admit I’ve never gone). I would advise you to not try to find the buried treasure, though????

Fred R. Shapiro, an associate librarian, explained the latest acquisition: “A hundred years from now, if someone wants to study the bobbleheads, where will they go? There needs to be an archive.”

Hopefully they also acquire a Dwight Schrute bobblehead to round out this necessary collection.

Additionally, Davenport will be hosting Gail Carson Levine, author of Ella Enchanted, Thursday at 4 in the common room. Ella Enchanted is one of the WORST examples ever of books –> movies, but I’ve read that book upward of 20 times (and cried every time) so my strong feelings on the subject are legitimate.

So, take a Tripp (ugh) down memory lane and relive childhood favorites. Lois Lowry of the Giver came when I was a freshman, and was awesome. Granted, the Giver had a wider readership than the Josefina series, but her tea was packed to the max, so go early if you’re interested!

I did intend, however, to point out some issues that I felt the Initiative might face. I do not know how the students behind the Initiative intend to solicit writers for the project, but I do feel that there is a danger in not having enough student voices to be fully representative—which, I’m glad to have found out, is a danger that the creators of the project recognize. Speaking observationally, I think that Yale students rarely do anything—because of how busy they are, and involved in their own projects, and stressed, etc. etc. etc.—that doesn’t profit them personally in some way. And while I think that the goals of the Initiative are entirely worthy (and it would be awesome if students were required to post 500 or so words by the University), I think that the Initiative will face many challenges in finding writers who aren’t already involved in issues pertaining to those being addressed by the Initiative itself. If the Initiative could find a way to ensure that a huge proportion of the Yale population does contribute a post, I think the project will be a truly invaluable resource.

Lastly, and generally, the Bullblog is exactly what its title states—a blog. By writing in the first person (and frequently using qualifiers like “in my opinion”), I am recognizing that my opinions are entirely subjective, based on personal experience and observation. Some of those opinions may be wrong, and some may be right. In my opinion, I have often found that the term abstinence is used by religious people, but there are obviously those who call themselves abstinent who are not religious, and there are also, obviously, people who are religious and do not claim abstinence. I did not and would never imply that anything I have written was based on years and years of strict research and study.

To conclude, I think that sex@yale has the potential to be awesome, and I think everyone should have to write for it. I know that I will be doing so. And I’m also glad that the discussion has been started about the Initiative, and pleased to find that the people working for it care so much about seeing it succeed.

THE END (hopefully).

Gordon writes:

The website wants to represent a range of perspectives: religious, gay, straight, bisexual, experimenting, abstinent, in a long-term relationship or experienced in the world of casual hook-ups. Each of these viewpoints will hopefully offer a unique vision of successful “sex at Yale.” The angle, tone and length of each essay is flexible, but ultimately every essay should come together to form a diverse, thoughtful student guide to Yale’s sexual culture.

The thing is, these sorts of exercises tend to elicit the most sexually liberated and experienced (if not promiscuous) respondents, as anyone who’s ever read New York‘s Sex Diaries can tell you. Why would someone who’s abstinent think to seek out Sex@Yale? I can imagine the religious or abstinent (in my mind, more or less the same—I think there’s a huge difference between someone who labels themselves “abstinent” and someone who just isn’t having sex for a variety of reasons) attempting to proselytize to the sexual heathens of Yale’s population, but the anonymous format doesn’t really lend itself to those people’s choices coming across as attractive options—especially when juxtaposed with other Yalie’s salacious hook-up tales.

But anyways, good luck to Gordon and Miller, and the best of luck to the class of 2014 if they try to take anyone’s experiences with sex at Yale (as listed in “Sex@Yale”) as prescriptive.