College and the economy: Sex to pay off debt

Chances are good if you are reading this that you either have now, or have had at one time, some amount of student debt.

There are exceptions of course, but by and large a good number of college students take on some amount of debt while pursuing their education. For you economics majors it's classified as "good debt", but for the rest of us, it's still debt.

There are many different options to pay off said debt; many of us carry loans, our parents may carry loans as well; some students get a traditional part-time job, others work full-time and take night classes, some start their own small business. However you do it, you find a way.

However, according to an article published on the Huffington Post in early August, more and more college-aged women are turning to sex to pay the bills.

Sex for money is far from a new concept. The idea of people paying for sex has been around since man first realized where to park his penis for a good time, and since women realized that men would pay for a visit.

However, that is not what disturbs me about what this article described. In short, it detailed a website called SeekingArrangement.com, which is a way for "sugar daddies" to meet "sugar babies", those are their terms, not mine, trust me; daddies being the one seeking sex, and the babies being the facilitators.

The founder of SeekingArrangement.com highlighted how his site has seen a 350% increase in "college sugar babies" seeking to pay off tuition and bills since 2006. 350% percent, for Christ's sake, that is a percentage that you would think has to do with the national debt, or the amount your drinking has increased since you saw your last tuition statement, not college prostitution.

Is the founder of this site, Brandon Wey, doing something wrong by facilitating these exchanges between wealthy lonely men and desperate cash strapped college women?

Personally, I do not think so at all. Frankly, if such a service did not exist, there are many other sites, such as Craigslist that also have the ability to make such connections, but are not as upfront about it. Is this, to put it in the terms the Huff Post piece a "thinly veiled digital bordello" or is it a way for struggling people to pay their bills however they can?

I would tag it as the latter, times are desperate and people will resort to whatever means necessary when there is little help available to them. Is prostitution immoral?

That's for you to decide based off of your own morals and values, personally I believe it is a choice (in most circumstances, of course there are exceptions) and we as a society should not look down on people who choose that lifestyle, rather we should help them conduct themselves in a safe and clean manner, like the Netherlands does.

That is a topic for another piece.

Now, I am by no means a feminist, nor am I a misogynist, conservative, liberal, professional of any sort or otherwise. But to me, the fact that a number of women are selling their bodies to pay for school, while not shocking, is flatly upsetting.

I am in no way insinuating that this is the going trend or that it is an epidemic. But to think that in the country we live in, smart, talented young people feel they have to turn to selling sex to pay for their education?

And they are doing so while our government seems content on pacifying the interests of corporate America, cutting funding for Pell grants, and in general being disgracefully and embarrassingly ineffective in our greatest time of economic strife since the Great Depression.

They sit idly by allowing students to resort to such drastic measures to pay for school just so they can enter a job market that is about as welcoming as parachuting into Death Valley at noon in August wearing thermal underwear and covered in leather from head to toe. `

To be frank: are you serious? "Our children are our future." is a comment made by countless politicians each year. Well riddle me this Mr. or Mrs. John or Jane Q Politician, if our children and their educations are so important, how about you use your education and public office and make it easier for us to obtain and use our education?

How about you stop jerking off corporate America and start helping the backbone of this country. The backbone are those people who care so much about making it in this country that they are willing to sell themselves just for the chance at making it. The people who spend years of their lives and thousands upon thousands of dollars working their asses off for the prospect of a bright future; and here they are, selling their bodies for money to pay off debt.

How ironic is it for someone to take a class in ethics, or morals, or sociology and then leave that class, head to the bus stop to wait for a "Sugar Daddy" to engage in, what a good portion of our society believes to be immoral or unethical behavior, just so she can sell herself and use the money she makes to continue to learn why our society looks at what she is doing in the way that it does.

The fact that this trend is growing is not surprising given the economy and rotting social structure of our country, but it is appalling. Our politicians need to end the political games and work on what is really wrong with our country. Stop putting our morals ahead of our means and stop taking it from corporate America. If you say you are going to do something, do it. Help the students. You're going to need us.

**The article I read and based this piece off of focused on females. There is almost certainly a portion of the male population that also engages in such activity to pay their college tuition, however I decided to stick to one gender for purposes of succinctness.**