KGP Sutra – A Study of Sexual Behavior and Perceptions

A comprehensive survey on sexual behaviour and perceptions in KGP.

Dear Readers,

It’s here. As we had promised. We talk about what you think about relationships, what you think about sexuality.  The creepy on-campus gender ratio – has it actually made you creepy? Your dress code – does KGP have double standards? We talk about these and many other things. More importantly, we try to find out the difference between what you think and what you do, the difference between what your friends think they would do and what they do in reality. And to some inquisitive minds who might be scratching their heads in curiosity regarding the source of our gold mine, we are more than willing to dispel your concern. It is you.

On the 5th of this month, we had sent a comprehensive survey to you humbly requesting you to take out a tiny bit of your valuable time to answer our questions – with undiminished seriousness and honesty. And you guys did not disappoint. We had over 1300 genuine responses. That’s right. And though we might have been a tad too late to arrive on the scene compared to our western counterparts, the size of the survey makes it one of the larger campus surveys of this nature in the world (you are free to google).

While planning this issue, we had a lot of concerns: is KGP mature enough to handle such a survey? What are the questions we can ask? To what extent should we go? How do we frame the questions to prevent offending sensibilities? Which questions would extract maximum useful information? Will the fairer sex respond to our questionnaire? What if our survey is spammed?  How do we ensure accuracy? The list was never ending. It was a challenge to put together an issue for a community where sexuality remains a hush-hush affair. Which is a little ironic, considering the fact that a whopping 65% of males and 51% of females are cool with the idea of pre-marital sex.

But then things can’t be stopped or abandoned just because there are hurdles on the way.  Particularly when we believe the issues we were trying to raise were pertinent and needed your attention.  Our success in this case depended primarily on your cooperation. After putting in countless hours to arrive at the blueprint, we are glad that you have given us such an overwhelming response and that our efforts have not gone in vain. Because, as a campus newspaper, it’s your support we value and need   the most.

Elaborating on our survey methodology, we took every possible step to make our survey as transparent and fair as possible. The questions were designed to highlight some interesting, and perhaps, conflicting trends. At all points of time, our survey was completely anonymous as we had stated earlier. Mails were sent to each one of you. We didn’t want your valuable opinions to get marred by spam and hence, had put in various checks and measures to curb it. The questionnaire was kept lengthy, elaborate and had been divided into different sections to encourage genuine responses. We followed a rigorous scanning procedure in which every entry was scanned for possible mischief. Abnormal, duplicate responses in succession and/or entries leaving an easy trail were obviously deleted. Our final results, fortunately, indicated very mild spamming which was in line with our expectations from a mature and responsible junta. Oh! It appears some respondents have crushes on some of our editors. We are truly flattered.

 

Utmost care was taken to prevent any part of the questionnaire from being offensive. And even if a single person’s sentiments were compromised while going through our form, it is not okay for us, and we unconditionally apologize for the same. Being a campus newspaper, we are expected to deliver the same quality as any professional media organization with just a fraction of resources and experience.  In the process, we, as student media, might make errors. What’s more important here is our willingness to learn from mistakes and keep growing as an organization.  And we deserve a chance to do so.

 

And the survey trends- just like everything else at our IIT, the results are anything but average. Love may be blind elsewhere but definitely not in KGP. Over 60% of females say they would prefer dating a musician over others with the macho athlete coming a close second. Guys, you now know the magic formula. An overwhelming 78% of the girls think figure is what guys look for the most. That is not true. Males prefer your personality followed by facial features.  Only 5% of the male population have never indulged in porn in stark contrast to 45% of females. About 47% of the boys say that they wouldn’t mind dating a senior girl – okay, you managed to surprise us here.

The sex ratio in IIT is screwed up for a reason. Your probability of finding a girl might be higher outside, but that of finding a smart girl, is definitely much much lesser. An average kgp girl dates between 2-3 people in 4-5 years. An average kgp guy dates in negligible amounts. Which obviously gives way to sexual frustration. It’s not until you get into a relationship that you realize that sexual frustration was way much better than dating. In ignorance, you stay much frustrated.

-Biswa Kalyan Rath (’11 batch)

Coming to some statistics which, in some ways, point out that everything is not fine on campus-the main aim of our initiative. These charts give some leading clues on what all can go wrong when people live in such a skewed-gender-ratio environment. 67% of males say they have felt resentment towards campus girls at some point of time. 80% think girls here have it easier. 31% still have a problem with voting for a female candidate. Nearly half of the female population say they have been misbehaved with on campus.  61 % of boys and 56% of girls feel that there’s a need for less conservative dressing.  Yet a shocking 68% of male population judges girls on their dressing sense. We observe a trend where you say you are open-minded. You like to think you are. But that broad-mindedness gets a little out of sync when it comes to what you actually, perhaps subconsciously, do in practice. 81 % of guys would like to have a liberal hostel visitation regime. Over 50% say there are mature enough to decide for themselves and don’t need any kind of online content filtration. Still, over 50% girls feel that they are judged on a higher moral ground on campus. And yes, the lack of opportunities for boys and the excess of them for girls are taking a toll. 88% of males have never had a relationship on campus compared to 34% girls. 40% of the girls who responded say they have been asked out 3 times or more.

Having participated in a number of inter-college events during my B-Tech days, I got an opportunity to interact with quite a few students from DU, National Law Schools and other non-engineering colleges. For some reason, almost all of them hold a viewpoint of IITians as being desperate.   During college, I remember having a chat with a friend of mine from NUS, Singapore. I still remember her referring to us as “You IIT-ians are so desperate. You come to Singapore as summer interns and expect every second girl here to take you to bed.” She, it seems, had an awkward experience with a gentleman from IIT Kharagpur. Discounting the fact that the average Indian-male’s libido shoots up to twice the amount when on foreign shores (you can blame the weather and the proximity to the equator for that, at-least in the case of Singapore), I think the skewed sex ratio on campus plays a significant factor in shaping the way we behave when we interact with outsiders.

-Sumeet Mohanty (’11 batch)

 

We also asked you about your orientation and noted that there is a significant presence of homosexuals and bisexuals on campus. We have taken the entries at face value and are glad to have got frank answers from them. It was encouraging to see half of the population not caring about the sexual orientation of an individual but we would have liked it to be much more. Nearly 90% of homosexuals do feel the need for a support group while the number stands at 68% for the bisexuals. We talk about that and more. We already know that life is bit difficult for the boys in the social milieu that KGP presents. We find out whether it’s true for the girls too. Finally, we release the data for most of the questions we had asked. Why not all? Because we believe certain questions might appear to be slightly insensitive to some of you and we respect that.

The coverage is not intended to be sensationalistic. Neither is publicity the aim. All we want is for you to have an entertaining and informative read, and possibly gain some pertinent insights into the KGP way of life.

Happy reading and all the best for your exams!