Alternative financial aid

How students are using sex to pay their tuition

By Robert Nathan Eberhart
From the May 2006 Print Edition

The Berkeley sex trade

A year after the electoral failure of Berkeley’s Measure Q, the controversial initiative that would have made enforcement of prostitution laws the city’s lowest priority, little has been done to rid the city of the sex trade.

Berkeley’s prostitutes have since been caught in a legal limbo between prostitution, which remains a high-priority offense, and the police officers who do nothing to enforce the applicable laws.

Berkeley’s tolerance of prostitution has spawned a growing sex-trade community that, despite its de facto legal status, is lorded over by pimps whose power comes from the shadowy underground in which prostitutes work.

The most profligate sources of this growing sex trade are the online marketplaces that deal in everything from international vacations to sex. The most successful of these Web sites, and indeed the one with the highest volume of sex commerce, is Craigslist.com.

Founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark in San Francisco, the online database of free classifieds now accommodates more than 3 billion page views per month and has established itself in more than 150 cities around the world.

The “personal” section of the Web site contains an area for the posting of “erotic services,” which lists approximately 50 ads per day soliciting sex for money in the Berkeley area alone. Many of these ads make no attempt to conceal the nature of their offerings, and with thousands of prostitutes and pimps in the Bay Area using the forum to ply their trade every week, Craigslist.com has become the principal forum by which people buy and sell sex.

One typical listing includes the dimensions of the woman’s body, services offered, and the price ranges. “Hi, my name is Amber, I am a 19 year old female with blonde hair, blue green eyes, a 34c cup, I weigh 123lbs., I have long legs and a nice apple bottom. I am currently attending school at the University of San Francisco and having a little trouble with tuition. If you like a beautiful southern belle…”

The more explicit postings, complete with visual aids, are available to anybody with an Internet connection.

Despite the open and public nature of these offerings, Craigslist denies any intentional involvement in the sex trade. “All illegal activities are prohibited on Craigslist,” said Jim Buckmaster, president and CEO of Craigslist. “Staff remove problem ads brought to attention by users.”

The trade is not limited to Craigslist. High demand has spawned a variety of Web sites offering sex, using thinly disguised euphemisms such as ‘escorts,’ ‘outcalls,’ and ‘sensual massages.’

Berkeley law enforcement officials are resigned to the sex trade’s promulgation. “We haven’t had a single [prostitution related] arrest in my memory,” said Captain Mitch Celaya of the University of California Police Department. “It’s just not something that really ever comes up.”

Repeated calls to the Berkeley Police Department yielded no response. The city’s unwillingness to pass measures to deal with prostitution or enforce the applicable laws suggests a case of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

Avaren Ipsen, a UC Berkeley theological scholar and lecturer and principal supporter of Measure Q, spelled out the reasons for the police inaction in an interview: “The police are not interested in making arrests for indoor prostitution, only on-the-street prostitutes. It’s integral to maintaining the high property values in Berkeley.” Ipsen explained, “That allows police to ignore the Internet sites where sex is solicited, like Craigslist and the others. It’s an image that has to be maintained.”

While powerful political interests push the city to selectively prosecute unwanted sex workers, Berkley’s underground indoor sex trade flourishes.

This indoor prostitution trade is protected by the fact that at these sites, where sex is bought and sold, it is the prerogative of the users to self-regulate. “Our users are empowered to remove inappropriate postings from the site using our flagging system,” Buckmaster said.

Sex and students

The sex trade is not limited, as some have claimed, to the lower classes of society. Nor are all sex workers as Janice Raymond, professor of women’s studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of Sex Trafficking of Women in the United States: International and Domestic Trends, has labeled them: “out on the streets, in brothels, trafficked, poor, and of mainly African, Latin or Asian descent.”

One candid sex worker and self-described UC Berkeley student and activist, a representative of many in her situation, appeared to break most of those stereotypes. “I do it because it’s a thrill and I need the money,” the individual said on condition of anonymity. “I can make enough money to put myself through school.”

It’s the shadowy nature of the business that she fears, not ‘morality’ as some would have it. “My biggest fears are arrest and abuse by customers, but so far it’s been worth it … It’s my body.”

The National Union of Students, an English student-advocate group and one of the few trying to track the makeup of the sex-worker population, estimates that more than 60 percent of sex workers are students. Suffering from crippling debt, many have turned to prostitution as a way of paying the bills.

Many of the sex workers boot-strap their way through school by performing in strip clubs or providing indoor prostitution services. Ipsen, who regularly works with educated, young, student sex workers, finds the social stigmatization carried by a sex worker is often outweighed by economics.

A continuing problem

Measure Q’s opponents, who forecasted pimp invasions and increases in prostitution, belie the fact that the initiative was largely a symbolic act. Measure Q would have made Berkeley officially opposed to state prostitution laws, required semi-annual reports from the Berkeley Police Department regarding enforcement of prostitution laws, and made prostitution a low-priority offense.

But with virtually no enforcement of prostitution laws before or after the defeat of the initiative, Measure Q’s opponents appear to be more interested in maintaining the status quo and brushing this embarrassing element of the city under the carpet than in actually doing anything about it. For now, some UC Berkeley students will continue to pay for their education through these less traditional and more dangerous channels.

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