Every week the editorial board reflects on a current issue in Our View. The position taken does not reflect the opinions of everyone on the Hilltop Views staff.

The University of Texas at Austin’s student-run newspaper The Daily Texan has been running some controversial columns about sex. These columns are written by four anonymous students under the pseudonyms Fabulous Frank, Sexy Sally, Virgin Veronica and Committed Caroline.

Each one of these columnists write about sex from their own perspective. Fabulous Frank writes about sex as a gay man. Sexy Sally describes herself as “a lady on the streets but a freak in the sheets.” Virgin Veronica writes about how she wants to lose her V-card as fast as UPS Rush delivery. Committed Caroline is the one who advocates for a steady relationship.

While these columns do bring an important topic to readers, the way the writers discuss sex does not present the most progressive approach. Generally, not all people want to read about a person’s escapade of having sex in a public bathroom like Sexy Sally wrote. This post had no thought to how her experience could affect a wider audience or could bring up a more pressing social issue. Nor do students want to see a step-by-step in their college newspaper on how to masturbate. There are so many other ways to talk about sex than writing about fetishes or what you do by yourself.

These things should remain on personal blogs or locked within someone’s memories, not on a 100-year-old well-respected student newspaper.

These columns are just distasteful.

Just because you write about sex does not give you the freedom to be dirty with your writing. Sex must be approached from an angle that gives it social relevance.

There are so many other ways to approach sex other than just telling stories or sharing what turns on the writer. Articles could be written on student misconceptions about sex before being given “the birds and the bees” talk. Perhaps the writer could explore how various high schools taught sexual education or maybe address issues on how the public views college students’ sexuality and sexual abuse— these are the real topics that need to be discussed.

While the approach the columnists take is wrong, they do bring up the important point that sex is something many Americans do not talk about openly, even though it is only natural for us to be curious about sex.

Sex should not be a taboo topic. We all know that it is essential to have sex to continue the livelihood of our species. People are also having sex for pleasure and it needs to be discussed openly.

We should be less sensitive about sex, but at the same time we should not be desensitizing it with sensationalist stories. To desensitize sex, we should write about truly meaningful topics in intelligent ways, not just topics that entertain the masses with vapid storytelling.