If you believe in abstinence until marriage, I think you’re scared and repressed.

Honestly, you abstainers, why knock something you haven’t tried? Sex is wonderful.

I see it this way: if I’m going to sit for hours in the library and study for midterms, spend an hour on the elliptical because I sat for hours, and eat food in the dining halls because my parents wanted me to have a meal plan, I should at least allot myself thirty minutes of intimacy.

If the prudes and fanatics prefer not to masturbate or orgasm, that’s on them. Not only are they missing out, but they’re fighting a losing battle. Biology is hard to beat. We are programmed to want sex. And honestly, I’m tired of religion denying people their basic, biological rights.

Still, I understand their pleas of “The media is so evil. We’re rebelling against society’s horrible standards. We believe a woman is worth more than her sexuality.”

Yeah, I agree, but the facts are clear - pledges of abstinence are empty promises.

Sex abstainers are six times as likely to engage in oral sex (head = STDs) than sex enjoyers, and they are less likely to use a condom when they finally have sex (on average just 18 months later than non-pledgers.) Oh, and rates of sexual transmitted diseases are equal in abstainers and enjoyers alike.

(Plus, didn’t Jamie-Lynn Spears shun premarital sex?)

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So The Colbert Report is coming to the Zellerbach theatre from April 14 to 17. Want tickets? Too bad. I think they sold out thirty minutes before Stephen even made the announcement.

But alas, this column is not about Stephen Colbert. Nor is it about selling out. It’s about Doritos — as in the sponsor of Colbert’s visit, officially titled “The Colbert Report: Doritos Spicy Sweet Pennsylvania Primary Coverage from Chili-Delphia — The City of Brotherly Crunch.” And this column is about America. And maybe, just maybe, it’s about a collision of the two. (Missy Elliot not included, but we might just be able to get OK Go.)

Doritos, you see, are an American snack food. For one thing, the Doritos headquarters are located in Dallas, Texas — the most American state we’ve got. (Despite that whole “annexation” thing.) For another, the execs over at Frito-Lay have managed to come up with a wide array of Dorito flavors to parallel this country’s diversity: Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch (delicious), Nacho Cheese (traditional), even Cheeseburger (fire that guy).

But perhaps most importantly, Americans consume more Doritos per capita than any other nation on any other continent. And sure, that might make us the most obese country in the history of the universe — but that can’t be blamed on just one snack, can it?

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This is the first of an at-least-one-part series about how awkward professors are.

Professors get awkward about even the simplest things, like their names. When introducing themselves to students, you can actually see them furrowing their brows as they debate whether to self-identify as “Professor Parker” or just “Peter.” To some extent, it’s an understandable dilemma. The formality of one might place an icy wall between teacher and student forever, while the familiarity of the other might undermine the professor’s authority until the class devolves into an orgy — cellphones ringing, kids snorting blow off the lectern, sheer chaos.

But rather than summoning the resolve to go with one title or the other, professors invariably end up waffling between the two, plunging themselves and the entire class into a purgatory of awkwardness.

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Eavesdropping on undergrads isn’t a hobby, really, just a by-product of working at Penn.

As a point of fact, half the stories I overhear on campus start or end with some variation of: “I was so drunk.” This is often offered as an excuse or explanation for behavior that is ridiculous, rowdy, embarrassing, or — I’ll grant you this — occasionally hilarious.

But it turns out you can’t blame your especially enthusiastic Soulja Boy routine on Coors Light alone.

In a series of studies in the 1970s and 1980s, students were given — over the course of about an hour — either five icy tonic waters or five vodka tonics, without knowing which was which. The results?

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I drank too much my freshman year. And I did it legally.

For, back in the day, I was a British university student. I transferred to mighty Penn and entered as a sophomore. Memories of my freshman year are often interrupted with blurry images and something to do with putting traffic cones on the heads of the hundred-year-old statues on campus. I would see them the next day, impossibly high up and know, somehow, that I had something to do with it. Maybe. I’m not quite sure.

In Britain, most universities require you only to get forty percent in your first year - in a set of exams at the very end. Combine this with being allowed to drink legally and having bars in every dorm and you get Oktoberfest, year-round, with liquor. Even though a fair amount of drinkage goes on at dear old Pennsylvania, anyone who has been on exchange to the UK will tell you that it quite simply does not compare.

I still don’t agree with American drinking laws. They are not easily enforceable and all they really achieve is adults not being able to hold their drink.

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For admissions officers, application review season (currently underway) is the most fun time of the year. But according to a recent DP article, some of this year’s admissions essays look as if they’ve been plagiarized or even written by counselors and parents — and that’s not “authentic.”

First of all, it astonishes me that people still want to attend this university — what with its killer hawks, rampant anarchists and sofa-less male bathrooms. But on the other hand, I sympathize with this brand new batch of Penn hopefuls, and I want to help them and future generations with the intimidating task of writing a college essay.

In that light, I’ve gathered some of the best tips from EssayEdge.com — The NY Times’ top-rated college essay site — and reinterpreted them below without all the academic jargon. If I can help just one Harvard reject make it into Penn, my job is complete.

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The Daily Pennsylvanian recently reported that Harvard University proposes to enforce women’s only gym hours (about six hours a week) up in Cambridge. In the words of my namesake and hero, Eric Cartman, that is total and utter “bullcrap!“.

Exactly why is it that women get this treatment? For those of you following Islamic law, as stated in the article, I can understand. My solution would be a separate room within the gym, rather than banning all men from the gym. That’s how they do it in predominantly Muslim countries, anyway.

But what about the rest of you??? Would you like to dress even less appropriately? Can you not stand the idea of a penis being within five hundred yards of an elliptical machine? Do you think we men care if you look your best when working out? If you do not like us staring (which we shouldn’t), then I suggest a pair of sweatpants and not skin-tight, arse-hugging, lycra, look-at-me short-shorts.

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Most of us remember those lengthy, impressively pointless “career tests” we had to take in our junior year of high school. They would ask simple questions — like “Do you enjoy laying bricks?” — and then predict a potential career for the respondent if he said “yes.” (My guess: a bricklayer.) Some would even ask more difficult and philosophical questions — like “Do you have a soul?” — and predict a good-fit college for a “yes” answer. (My guess: Wharton.)

But as fun as those tests were, it turns out that many high schoolers more or less ignore them. (And have a whole different understanding of the phrase “to get tested.”) This report, for example, explains that only half of teenage students actually seek out career counseling, and those who do don’t find it particularly effective.

That said, I’m not trying to say that high school guidance counselors — even the worst of ‘em — are totally hopeless. Perhaps Stephen Colbert said it best in I Am American (And So Can You!):

“A guidance counselor [wonders], ‘If I’m so good at finding careers, how did I end up with this one?’”

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“You can lead me to college, but you can’t make me think,” proclaims a shirt reportedly popular at Duke.

How true — and how sad.

In a recent class of mine, one student would ask “will this be on the test?” all throughout the semester, nearly every time something especially complicated was discussed. If the answer was no, she fell silent. Only if the answer was yes did she feel like it was worth following up: “Could you explain that again?”

Grade-obsessed students like this one will surely graduate, but they’ll leave with an expensive piece of paper and some nice numbers, not an education.

In a society where competition is rewarded and “intellectual elitist” is a scathing slur, it’s no wonder that some treat college like a tollbooth: choose a lane, pick up your diploma, and drive off. E-Z Pass is available for everyone, of course.

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Unless you live under a large, white button — or don’t read The DP — you are probably already aware of (or maybe have mourned the) the demise of “Street Sweeper.” The DP scrapped 34th Street’s scandalous anonymous gossip section this semester. It has been replaced by “Overheard at Penn.”

Still, Penn students will not settle for gossip mediocrity, for Penn students are not mediocre. So something needed to be done — fast. We tried calling our parents for help — no response. We tried using our Ivy League status — laughed at. We even tried to pay our way through — declined. But then, by some undeserving miracle, our prayers were answered: Juicycampus.com.

No, it’s not a Campusfood spinoff (fatty!), but a new outlet for our scandal-ridden, Yenta-like tendencies. Juicy, deeply satisfying, has come to the rescue.

Who can join the elite ranks of this site, you ask? Anyone.

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