Spring fever was in the air Tuesday night, as students from all over campus converged on Collis Commonground for the second annual Sex Festival.
The Center for Women and Gender sponsored the educational event, where visitors could pick up free samples of condoms and lubricants, have their questions answered anonymously in the "confessional" and snack on anatomically-modeled cookies.
Tables were set up around the room, each one themed to address a different aspect of sex education. Issues ranged from self-defense to self-pleasure, and many groups offered displays and demonstrations.
One visible presence was Rape Aggression Defense instructor Rebel Roberts, a Safety and Security officer. Roberts started teaching RAD, which is offered for physical education credit, in 1996, and has since taught hundreds of Dartmouth women principles of self-defense.
"There is a fine line between being aware and being scared," said Roberts. "We try to teach empowerment. A big part of defense is the mindset."
Several of Roberts' former students demonstrated the martial arts-like defense techniques at the festival. Roberts played the attacker, striking her "victim" with large foam pads.
Vi Le '04 was among the students playing the victim, responding to the attack with a series of punches and kicks. With each strike, the student shouted a loud "No!"
"The verbalization makes a difference when you're in an assault situation," Roberts said. "And it builds confidence in training."
Across from the RAD presentation, representatives from Dick's House presented students with a taste-test of a variety of intimate lubricants.
"We want to emphasize the increased effectiveness of condoms with the use of lubricants," said Elizabeth Hirsh, the manager of the Women's Health Program.
"We also have free, confidential STD testing available," Hirsh said.
The participants from Dick's House offered a confidential question-and-answer booth for students to talk to a clinician in private.
Dick's House also sponsors the campus group SexED, founded last summer. The group is comprised of 20 students who travel around campus and give safe-sex demonstrations to dorms and Greek houses.
"I'm amazed by how many students don't know how to put on a condom -- and they're in college," said SexED peer educator Allison Reed '06.
Sheila Hicks '04 demonstrated sexual toys alongside at the Center for Women and Gender table. Hicks, a SexED peer educator as well, did an informational session at Bones Gate fraternity last week, which evoked mixed reactions.
Father Brendan Buckley of Aquinas House responded to Bones Gate's promotional e-mail, writing, "Please remove Aquinas House from your blitz list since we will obviously not be promoting your anti-Christian and hedonistic event."
Hicks expressed surprise at the response, but continued with her presentation.
When informed of Buckley's response, Hirsh said, "We try to provide support for a range of sexualities, whether you are involved or not involved. We are not geared toward [telling students to] 'have sex,' but toward teaching them how to deal with their sexuality as an adult who has sexual feelings."
Reed added, "We want to make sex something people can talk about at Dartmouth and encourage communication between partners."
Another group of students who were not affiliated with a group set up a table to promote media literacy, displaying an array of magazine photographs of women.
"We are not anti-pornography," said Ingrid Nelson '05. "We just want people to ask, 'What's positive and what's negative about these pictures?'"
Nelson and Kristen Lieske '07 cut pictures out of Hustler, Vogue and other magazines to show the ways women's bodies are used in the media.
Nelson pointed to a photo from Hustler that showed just a woman's genitalia and not her face.
"She's not a person. She's not giving consent," Nelson said. "What we see on TV, the more we are bombarded with images, the less disturbed we are by things that should disturb us."
