According to Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Alfred Lubrano, "in places like Brandeis University, young women are reporting that they're drinking more, and that they're confused and aching, referring to themselves as whores, saying they feel empty."Lubrano, in his "Unconventional Wisdom" column, writes that girls today are perpetuating the "slut culture" in order to assert themselves. We young women apparently feel that sex with random men is empowering, and so contort ourselves to fit stereotypes of beauty and sexuality. We shoehorn ourselves into stiletto heels and dive headlong into the miasma of the inhibition-free party scene in order to attract men, all of whom are sexist pigs who would like nothing more than to use a woman and dump her three hours later.

Saying that Lubrano is mistaken about Brandeis is equivalent to saying that light travels rather quickly.

I do not deny there are schools where women feel they have to drink and "hook up" with men in order to feel accepted or fulfilled. But Brandeis University is not one of those schools. Our past two Student Union presidents have been women; next semester, another young woman will take over. Women are increasingly taking leading roles in social-action organizations and the scientific community.

What Lubrano refers to as "girls gone male"-young women taking power into their own hands, that is-manifests itself through "girls gone wild" in an intellectual sense rather than a sexual sense. Where did he obtain the supposed reports that Brandeis'''' young women are self-dubbed confused, aching, empty whores, when it is so clear to me that we are the exact opposite?

Furthermore, Brandeis University clearly encourages its women-and men, for that matter-to pursue the levels of sexuality with which they are comfortable. Free and confidential counseling, inexpensive contraceptives and other sexual products, seminars and discussion opportunities abound.

As a first-year, I received from my first week on campus advice on where to go for safe-sex products in the event that I did wish to have sex, and whom to speak to if I were confused about my sexual identity. Posters strewn over the walls of residence halls exhort students to have sober, healthy, consensual sex. Our University teaches us that sexual power is not fundamentally male and that women can sexually assert themselves without betraying their personal boundaries.

And there is a fundamental flaw in Mr. Lubrano's assertion that power, whether sexual or otherwise, belongs to men. Once again, it is true that women still bear the brunt of negative sexual stereotypes: Labels like "slut" and "skank" are overwhelmingly gendered in the feminine, and the debate as to whether women can balance high-powered careers and family lives remains all-too-present. Once again, it is true that some women "whore themselves" out simply to gain acceptance. Yet women like German chancellor Angela Merkel have unprecedented political power. Women like Meg Whitman, the top executive of eBay, have made significant impacts in the business world. Power and assertivness are losing their masculine connotations. And sexual promiscuity has not been the route women have taken to make this happen.

I ask my fellow students to take action. Alert the Philadelphia Inquirer and its misguided columnist that Brandeis University flies in the face of his ill-conceived stereotypes. Young women at Brandeis assert themselves, not through "servicing guys" in an attempt to gain sexual power, but through servicing the community academically and socially.

Lubrano's e-mail address at the Inquirer is alubrano@phillynews.com. Do not take my word for it; visit www.philly.com and read Lubrano's column. I suggest that all Brandeis students who wish to show Lubrano and his newspaper how wrong he is to send him a message with the subject heading "Brandeis Responds." Our messages will show how confused Brandeis students are-confused by columnists who misconstrue entire populations.