Trojan Surprise: Harvard Rises Up in Sex Survey

Two consecutive years underneath Princeton in the US News & World Report rankings can be frustrating for a campus that likes to be on top, but Harvard students lusting for signs of prowess can now look to a study that has placed Harvard atop the Ivies for its “sexual health.”

Commissioned by the makers of Trojan condoms and compiled by an independent research firm, the second annual Sexual Health Report Card recorded a 3.55 GPA for Harvard—10th overall of the 139 schools assessed, and up from the 43rd spot last year.

Among the 11 criteria in the study were availability of condoms and other contraceptives, STD testing, health center operating hours, and strength of sexual health awareness programs.

Harvard was directly tailed in the rankings by Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania. The biggest drop for any Ivy League school came from Princeton, which sank 28 spots to 34th. The nation’s crown prince of coital prudence was the University of Minnesota—taking the mantle from Yale, which dropped from first place to number 16.

The Report Card’s press release proclaimed the Ivy League the “most sexually healthy conference.” All the Ivies placed in the top 40 schools in the ranking. Still, Bert Sperling, the founder of Sperling’s BestPlaces, the firm that conducted the study, said yesterday that he was a bit surprised that Ivy League institutions did not fare better in the study.

“I’m familiar with the level of attention and care and concern they give their students, so I would have expected their health centers to rate a little bit higher than they did,” Sperling said in an interview. His children went to Dartmouth and Cornell.

Sperling also stated that because the study’s criteria for assessment changed this year, it was difficult to judge how much a specific school’s sexual health had evolved by comparing 2007’s list with 2006’s.

Forty-four Harvard students were interviewed for the study. Only one of them, according to Sperling, said they did not trust University Health Services.

The report incorporated surveys of student health centers as well as feedback from students, which was solicited via Facebook, Sperling said.

Jim Daniels, vice president of marketing at Trojan, praised the Ivy League’s newly crowned sultans of STD-suppression.

“I think Harvard should be very proud [of] being in the top 10,” Daniels said in an interview. “I think it shows that the students and administrators are very progressive and involved in preparing their students to be sexually healthy.”

Daniels also urged Harvard’s high-achieving populace not to be complacent.

“A 3.55 is good, but it’s not a 4.0—so there’s always room for improvement,” he said. “Hopefully what will happen is that college officials will look at this data and evaluate it and see how they could serve their student body better.”

Sarah Rankin, director of Harvard’s Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, said she was pleased by the results of the survey—but that she did not put much stock in the rankings.

“I think we do good work, but I didn’t need that survey to validate it,” she said.

—Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu.