Students at all-girl Cambridge college sent email asking them to be quieter when having sex

Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 8:24 AM on 05th February 2010

It's the type of institution where burning the midnight oil is normally associated with academic endeavour.

But it is late-night activities of a different kind which are currently worrying student leaders at a historic Cambridge women's college.

All 400 undergraduates at Newnham College have been sent an email asking them to be 'discreet in your activities' and reminding them that the corridors 'funnelled sound' and that some college walls are 'very thin'.

All 400 undergraduates at Newnham College were sent a polite email on Tuesday after the student union received 30 complaints about noise in the student halls

Lizzy Cole, president of the college's junior common room, sent the email after receiving 30 complaints about noise in student halls.

Undergraduates were horrified to think that their neighbours have heard them in the throes of passion. A second-year classicist, who asked to remain anonymous, said: 'When I read the email I cringed. I thought it must refer to me!'

Another Newnham undergraduate said: 'It's just so embarrassing to think that people have been listening in. I was blushing when I got the email.

You try to keep it down, but it's easy to forget the walls are so thin if you get a bit carried away. 

Newnham, whose former students include Sylvia Plath, Iris Murdoch, Germaine Greer and Joan Bakewell, was established as the second female college at Cambridge in 1871. Along with Murray Edwards College, it is one of the two remaining women's colleges.

It hit the headlines last February after several students from the Newnham Nuns drinking society were pictured in sexual poses during a boozy initiation ceremony. Yesterday Miss Cole said some students had misinterpreted the email.

'The complaints I received from people over the last month or so were mainly about general noise coming from the college,' she said

'It was things like shouting in the corridors and music being played late at night and in the early hours.'

However, Miss Cole added: 'Newnham does have a feminist reputation and also it's known as the slutty college of Cambridge, which I think is a bit unfair.

'But it's always going to be that way with an all-female college. We're not all extreme feminists or sluts  -  we're just normal women trying to enjoy Cambridge life.'

LINK TO PHOTO OF SCHOOL

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