Students lobby for university porn club
Group already meets weekly but wants official campus sponsorship
Posted: November 21, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Students at a state university that drew attention earlier this year for hosting a "Pornfest" are lobbying to make their pornography club a sponsored campus organization.
The Club for Persons of Randy Nature, or P.O.R.N., meets every Tuesday in a dorm room to watch free pornographic films while enjoying popcorn and soda, reports the student newspaper of Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash.
 Western Washington University campus |
The club apparently drew standing-room-only crowds of 30 to 40 students to a tiny dorm room, prompting residence hall staff to suggest the group become an official Associated Students club, which would enable them to have a proper meeting room.
Peter Rosenburg, associate director of University Residences, said there is no policy barring watching pornography in a dorm room, but the concern is some students might not want it and conflicts could arise, according to the student paper, the Western Front.
However, an Associated Student leader, citing the school's bad publicity surrounding the "Pornfest," said she didn't think it would be worth risking cutbacks in funding and injuring the schools reputation.
As WorldNetDaily reported, the school held its 11th annual National Outdoor Intercourse Day observance in May, with offerings such as condom hunts, a masturbation information table and "Pornfest," a showing of award-winning pornographic films along with discussion sessions. Brochures were distributed to inform students of the "repercussions of sex outdoors," and a guest lecturer from a "sex-positive" community center in Seattle spoke on dispelling the "myths" surrounding polyamory – having sexual relationships with more than one person at a time.
Some Pennsylvania lawmakers have tried to block funding to Penn State University for holding similar events.
"It's fine if [Club for P.O.R.N.] wants to get together and watch porn," Jason Wilmot, Associated Students vice president for activities, told the Western Front. "But they need to find a new venue to watch it because it's not in the university's best interest to make them an AS club."
The paper noted "national media sources showcased Western" after the controversy last May, resulting in "the president's office receiving more than 100 phone calls and e-mails from the media, angry parents and citizens condemning the event as an abuse of taxpayers' money."
"State funding-wise, it's not smart for our money to go to a porn club," Wilmot told the Western Front.
Club for P.O.R.N. is discouraged by the response, said a founder, freshman Ryan Farncomb, but continues, nevertheless, to meet each week.
"I can understand why [the AS] would object to it because I don't think a lot of people consider porn appropriate or politically correct," said Farncomb, who calls himself a "porn connoisseur."
"We have no long-term plans except to continue meeting."
The group has an unofficial sponsor, he said, an adult film store called Video Extreme that supplies free movies each week in exchange for putting a company sign on the door of the meeting room.
"We watch all varieties of porn – some old stuff from the '70s and newer stuff," Farncomb told the paper. "We get hard-core and soft-core, also."
