Harvard students just got a little less sexually repressed.
Harvard’s Committee on Student Life recently approved its first BDSM group — the Harvard College Munch — on campus. After meeting informally for about a year, the club has grown from a handful of people to roughly 30 members making up its quirky and kinky community.
As a recognized club on campus, Munch will be able to better advertise for events and help achieve its mission of removing the taboo surrounding kinky sex, said one group leader to The Harvard Crimson. Students interested in “sexploration” will appreciate the club’s institutional backing and expansion as an organization, the leader added.
Though the club has garnered national attention — The Huffington Post, NBC News and The Daily Beast have all run articles about Munch — it is not the first of its kind on a college campus. Rather, Harvard has joined the ranks of schools such as the University of Chicago, Columbia, Tufts and the University of Minnesota that already boast clubs dedicated to particular types of sex.
While Harvard’s administration has said it does not necessarily endorse the views of their school organizations, the club’s official launch marks another step in ongoing discussion about sexual culture on college campuses.