The standard op-ed in the Yale Daily News is shallow and obnoxious. It is somewhat more rare to find a piece that is downright vulgar, such as the one I read in the YDN this morning.
The article was written by a sophomore, Chase Olivarius-McAllister (double-barreled names always give me a sense of grim foreboding) and the title of the piece is “Today’s Women Can Reject Virginity Myth.”
The article is an argument against virginity (and the ‘myth’ that there is any goodness in it) and in favor of promiscuity and pagan hedonism. Indeed, I was not too surprised to discover that in the author’s Facebook profile she describes her religion as “unmodified feminism.”
I am not going to quote from that op-ed, because there is very little that any dignified publication would consider to be publishable (you can read it here). It seems unfortunate that the oldest college newspaper in the country, having forsaken good writing some years ago, should forsake as well the much more basic and more important quality of decency.
Despite the fact that so many at Yale insist that I should change myself from a man into an animal (and according the op-ed, my type is living in an “ethical vacuum”) I would like the author of the article to know — along with those outside Yale who look at our current state of affairs with horror — that this university still has ladies and gentlemen who do not sneer at tradition, who honor the moral code, and who refuse to turn away from the pursuit of human goodness. We are not many, but we are here.