Walking past Dartmouth Hall this Wednesday, I couldn't help but notice three jack-o-lanterns sitting on the front steps of the building. My initial appreciation for this seeming show of festive spirit instantly vanished, however, when I approached the pumpkins and saw the appalling depictions of various sex positions. As angry and disgusted as I was that some students might think this constitutes acceptable behavior, I wasn't nearly as surprised as I should have been. Perhaps this was because of the other experiences I had with the College's licentiousness during just the few weeks I had spent on campus.
It started at the "mandatory" Sex Signals orientation event, which consisted of shameless verbal reenactments of sexual encounters, replete with lewd and unrefined language. A few students would half-heartedly hold up red cards to indicate that the situation on stage had gone too far, but by and large, neither the actors nor the audience seemed to take the event seriously being humorous was the top priority. I was disappointed that Dartmouth would demand my presence at such a worthless and inappropriate event.
Then I started getting blitzes with subject lines such as "Hey Hey to your Vajayjay!" or "Orgasm Inc. Screening!" Most offensive to me was a "campus-wide" Sexperts newsletter called the "Hump-day Gazette," which features sex positions, sex toys of the month and a slew of inappropriate terms such as "fruitcake," "ho-bag," "slut," "cherries" and "man-meat." How could the College be cavalier enough to think it's OK to send me this junk?
Many people seem to equate a reticence to ostentatious and sexually charged material with a lack of maturity. The reality is that many civilized people choose to avoid explicit discourse about sex because of its animalistic vulgarity and very emotionally charged nature. It's because people's feelings surrounding sex tend to be delicate that the subject has traditionally been handled tenderly. For those of us who grew up in a traditional environment in which it simply wasn't okay to rant about sex, the material contained in the Hump-Day Gazette can be quite offensive.
Worst of all is that the College sponsors Sexperts with our tuition money, and does so under the pretense of educating us. How many students care which sex positions reduce neck strain or which erotic toys are best? Why is it important that we read about how some anonymous '11 lost his virginity on a pool table? This has nothing to do with our health or education, unless one defines health to mean happiness a definition that encompasses pretty much everything.
The Hump-Day Gazette is counterproductive to the development of young adults. Writing about promiscuous behavior in a light-hearted manner only increases the likelihood that students will be encouraged to do something similar. While it mentions that it's OK to be a virgin and talks about safety, the net effect of the raunchy newsletter is to add fuel to the fire of our already sex-crazed culture. Does the College really think there's a problematic deficit of awareness about sex?
Maybe one reason for my apparently unusual (although not unique see the Aug. 6, "Over-publicized Orgasm" by Jasper Hicks '12) sensibilities is that, having been homeschooled up until high school, I wasn't constantly bombarded by sexually-charged material while growing up. This lack of "education" made me treat the subject with more deference and respect than many of my peers, who talked about sex as easily as if they were commenting about the weather. Perhaps many people are so caught up in the current culture that it's hard for them to understand how someone could be offended by it.
While Sexperts may help spread some awareness about the risks of sex, the majority of content in the Hump-Day Gazette has nothing to do with education or health. Instead it is a source of amusement for sexual appetites and vulgar senses of humor through its focus on the mechanics of sexual gratification and on humorous stories about indecent and loveless escapades. The College should be ashamed of itself for funding and supporting groups that propagate these values.
It's a damning reflection of the under-representation of conservative social values if the College community can't comprehend the potential offensiveness of the current campus environment. If it doesn't want to go the way of Yale, where porn stars are regularly invited to campus, Dartmouth needs to draw the line and realize that it's just not okay to send explicit sexual material to all of its students.
