Posted on 02/17/2004 4:10:43 PM PST by presidio9
Last week, every Yale undergraduate received an e-mail heralding "Sex Week: A Celebration and Exploration of Sex and Sexuality at Yale University."
Imagine a modest student's reaction to "Grandmother of Masturbation" Betty Dodson's impending lecture on the topic, "One Woman's Illustrated Sexual Revolution." Yale sophomore David O'Leary, upon returning from five o'clock mass, found in his inbox the promise of a "Porn Party! sponsored by Wicked Pictures with porn star Devinn Lane."
According to event organizer and Yale senior Eric Rubenstein, Sex Week was supposed to open discussion about issues of love, intimacy, and romance, and was timed to coincide with Valentine's Day, to distract the many unattached Yalies who, Rubenstein says, are made lonely and depressed by the holiday. In truth, however, it was little more than a week-long bacchanal.
It was all under the guise of education, of course: Take, for example, the talk with "Rebecca and Claire from Toys in Babeland: 'Sex Toys 101.'" Or the lecture by professor — yes, that's right, a Yale professor — Naomi Rogers, on the "History of the Vibrator."
Sex Week was run by Students for a Sexually Aware Campus, an officially registered and university-approved "student organization," which (along with Sex Week) got a green light from Yale College Assistant Dean Edgar Letriz, who oversees administrative matters for student organizations (registration, funding, etc.). According to Rubenstein, Letriz knew what Sex Week was about when he approved it, and was "fine with it."
But how, exactly, does Sex Week enrich the quality of campus activity and education? David O'Leary wanted to know; after overcoming the initial revulsion he felt upon receiving the Sex Week e-mail, he was overcome by curiosity. "I went to a Sex Week event to see how offensive it might actually be," he explains. "On my way in, people attempted to hand me condoms and literature about sex-toy cleaning, vaginal and anal-sex tips, and safer-sex tips. When the speaker asked who in the room had never used a sex toy, I raised my hand. When she began to throw miniature vibrators to the people who had their hands raised, I quickly put my hand down and hoped she wouldn't throw one my way."
"Shortly thereafter, she began asking people why and how they masturbate, and read an explicit story about a boy and his mother's vibrator. I left with face red, directly after... I have never been more embarrassed in my life."
O'Leary may have been mortified, but Rubenstein doesn't really care. When asked whether he was worried that people might take offense at the vulgarity of Sex Week, especially as it invaded their inboxes, Rubenstein responded: "No, not really. People might be offended, but they won't openly reprimand me." And about this kind of sexual activity: "People need to accept the fact that it's here, because it is here. And the response I've gotten has been overwhelmingly positive — there were only three people who sent me e-mails back saying 'don't send me any more of this.'" Besides, "If Bush can handle most of the country voting for his opponent and his still being in office, I can handle a few people not liking my emails."
It's not just that Sex Week was in bad taste: It went beyond vulgarity to promote downright pernicious behaviors, and sometimes with odd allies. Take, for example, the seeming obsession with pornography. Strangely enough, Sex Week was put on with the help of Yale's Women's Center, the locus of radical feminism on campus. Feminists are always decrying the objectification of women, and yet pornography is one of the most demeaning and widespread means of objectifying women available.
Or consider that the proceeds from Sex Week's concluding party will go to Planned Parenthood. Or think about Sex Week's promotion of inappropriate relationships: On its website, it has a photograph captioned "Detention will be served in my bed," with an image of a young girl writing over and over on a chalk board, "I will not suck d*** in class." Having sex with a student, at least at most serious academic institutions, is grounds for dismissal; if the student is a teenager, as this girl appears to be, it's grounds for arrest and jail time for statutory rape.
In Rubenstein's eyes, though, nothing depicted on his website was "inappropriate." And again, it's probably true that most people agree with him.
But just because they do, doesn't mean everyone does. And just because people could put on Sex Week, doesn't mean they ought to have. And certainly Yale — insofar as it is a respected institution of higher learning and a supposedly serious environment for a supposedly serious education — didn't need to put its seal of approval on it.
In the e-mail and on its site, Sex Week was touted as "the only event of its kind on any college campus." That's a relief — there are at least a few Sex Weeks to go before Yale introduces the Janet Jackson Chair in Cultural Studies.
I'm curious about how you came across this post after it had been asleep for almost three years. Were you doing a keyword search for "orgy?"
No...it's related to a new topic about nude parties this year at Yale. They are all the rage.
I am just a casual observer of the human condition, and how it is becming less andless human at colleges like Yale.
This all supports the truth of Tom Wolfe's book, "I Am Charlotte Simmons", which emphasizes the decadence at today's Ivy League universities.
The new thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/1764363/posts
That phenomenon is not new. They have been going on since at least the president's first term. The rumor about Barbara attending one started then. And there have been several threads on it posted on this website. Liberal gossip journalists love to re-hash this story periodically so that they can use it to embarass the president. I highly doubt Barbara Bush would put herself in that situation (especially since she has a SS escort everywhere she goes), but who knows?
Typical, and common, in American universities. This is a favorite tactic of the left. It operates on young people eager to escape parental authority. Universities, basically instruments of communist indoctrination, have adopted as their goal the elimination of all forms of ethical/moral rules that the students may have learned from their parents and religion.
Universities pretend to give permission to the students to do anything that they may desire. Once the students have given in to their carnal desires, they readily adopt the new moral code.
Note: drunken revelry makes all this easier, and so, as you may have noticed, universities deliberately promote drunken revelry.
Last note: although universities give permission for unrestricted sex, they expel heterosexual males who take advantge of the new moral code.
I really miss Jean Shepherd.
Oh puhleeze.
How could Jean Shepherd be tied into this article? I thought he was about as squeaky cleans they came.
Hard-working people are paying more than $40,000 a year in tuition in the reasonable expectation that their little Josh or Julie will actually be exposed to something bearing a faint resemblance to "Education". Instead, when they are not being pestered by pro-Communist profs preaching Correctness Über Alles, they get Dental Dams and Dildoes 101.
As for me, I only stole it from my dad's bottom drawer for the articles.
He wrote some of his best stories for Playboy; I used to buy the magazine just for his stories.
...the charter was granted for a school “wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts and Sciences [and] through the blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Publick employment both in Church and Civil State.”It seems Yale has veered far from it's original course indeed.
The best and brightest never let me down.
You have it exactly right.
The kids coming out of these schools are moral misfits and codependent weaklings. It takes ten more years of living at home with Mom and Dad until they get their lives together and move out on their own (if ever). The "failure to launch" phenomenon.
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