Natalie Krinsky dares to go public on a topic most of her college classmates keep between friends -- sex in the Elm City, otherwise known as New Haven, Conn.

The 19-year-old junior is the resident "sexpert" at Yale University's student newspaper, one of a small but growing number of college publications with writers who detail the trials and tribulations of a favorite college pastime.

Their columns have campuses buzzing.

"And that's all right because we're 20 years old and just starting to talk about this stuff," says Krinsky, who detailed some of her sexual experiments in her most popular and controversial columns last year. Now she's back for more this semester.

As her fellow columnists often do, Krinsky uses a mix of wisecracks, raw language and unvarnished advice to make her points.

"Nudity is inherently humorous. The body is beautiful, of course, but the things we do with our bodies in the sack are plain weird," she observed in one of her column's tamer moments.

'Is this journalism?'

One column triggered hundreds of hits on the Yale Daily News Web site. Some students were aghast, and threatened to transfer. "Is this journalism?" one griped.

At least a few student editors seem to think so. College papers from New York University to the University of Kansas to the University of California-Berkeley, have started their own sex columns.

Editors say they're taking a cue from oft-read Internet-based columns that openly address the topic. Some note they're giving their readers -- many of them sexually active before college -- information they needed but never got.

A recent survey of 15- to 17-year-olds by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Seventeen magazine said among teens who had engaged in sexual intercourse, only one in 10 discussed their plans with a parent ahead of time. About 40 percent of sexually active respondents also said they'd never talked to their sex partners about the AIDS virus and other sexually transmitted diseases, the survey said.

"While it would be nice to think that kids don't have hormones and aren't ready to be sexual until they're married and in their 20s, that's not reality," says Meghan Bainum, sex columnist at the University of Kansas' student newspaper in Lawrence, Kan.

One controversial column caused the editors to voluntarily stop mailing Thursday editions (when Bainum's column runs) to local high schools. But they refused to pull it.

"Even with the negative feedback, we've never really wanted to censor her," says Kyle Ramsey, a student editor. "We only encourage her to write a stronger column."

Yvonne K. Fulbright is the New York University paper's sexpert, one who takes a more clinical approach.

"I definitely deal with racy issues, but I balance it with matters of sexual health," says Fulbright, a 26-year-old doctoral student in health studies with a master's degree in human sexuality.

Not always easy

From a personal standpoint, writing about sex isn't always easy. Krinsky says students make assumptions about her and pelt her with more than her share of insults. The most common: "You're a slut."

"It is difficult to put yourself out there," she says.

Bainum says she lost a free-lance contract at a newspaper because of her "reputation."

Still, both of them hope to continue as sex columnists after college. So does Fulbright.

"It's just one step," she says, "in trying to be the next Dr. Ruth."