Sex and the college campus

March 4, 2011 By

Parents of students at Northwestern University might be interested to learn where some of the $40,000 they spend annually in tuition goes to. From the Chicago Sun-Times:

More than 100 Northwestern University students watched as a naked 25-year-old woman was penetrated by a sex toy wielded by her fiancee during an after-class session of the school’s popular “Human Sexuality” class.

The woman said she showed up at the Feb. 21 lecture in the Ryan Family Auditorium in Evanston expecting just to answer questions, but was game to demonstrate. The course’s professor on Wednesday acknowledged some initial hesitation, but said student feedback was “uniformly positive.”

And Northwestern defended the class and its professor.

“Northwestern University faculty members engage in teaching and research on a wide variety of topics, some of them controversial and at the leading edge of their respective disciplines,” said Alan K. Cubbage, vice president for University Relations. “The University supports the efforts of its faculty to further the advancement of knowledge.”

I wonder if the three Methodist ministers who founded the school had this in mind. The story from the Sun Times doesn’t wonder if anyone might have any possible objections. The reporter was only able to find people who thought the live sex show, featuring BDSM toys, was the bee’s knees. The only moral issue that was addressed was whether anyone was coerced. That low bar being met, everyone gives a thumbs up on the show. This includes a researcher from the Kinsey Institute and, allegedly, a grandmother of one of the students there. Something tells me that maybe, just maybe, someone out there might have questioned whether this was appropriate for a public environment, much less a classroom environment.

Someone at Reuters was able to find someone who questioned the decision to host a live sex show was found:

The president of an American university said on Thursday he was launching an investigation into an on-campus presentation of a live sex act performed for students at an after class event.

President Morton Schapiro of Northwestern University, which is of Chicago in Evanston, said he was “troubled and disappointed” after hearing about the use of a sex toy on a naked woman by her fiance in front of more than 100 students.

It’s all worth comparing to coverage of the decision by Brigham Young University to suspend one of its star basketball players for a violation of its honor code:

Here’s an Associated Press sports story:

Zero is the number 6-foot-9 forward Brandon Davies wore before being booted off BYU’s team this week for breaking the school’s honor code.

Does it now also represent the odds the third-ranked Cougars have of making a deep run in the NCAA tournament?

The words “Mormon” or “Latter-day Saints” don’t appear in the story (or in this ESPN story), although the honor code is discussed and the sports implications are really well explained. You can’t really understand any school’s honor code without understanding why they have it. The reader who sent it in wrote:

Interesting clash here between America’s love for sports, a nationally ranked team that has a shot at the national championship, and the media left scratching their head trying to make sense of a religious school and their “Honor Code.”

Slate posted a tweet expressing shock at the school’s decision:

BYU suspends player, FOR THE SEASON, for having sex with his girlfriend.

But later Slate had an interesting piece attempting to answer a few questions about premarital sex at BYU.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Academia, Journalism, Mormons, Sex, Sports
  • http://blogs.chron.com/believeitornot Kate Shellnutt

    Northwestern alum here. Kind of speechless over the incident, but I will point out the misspelling of “fiancee,” which should be “fiance” since it was a dude.

  • Jerry

    This story showed up on the Yahoo “oddly enough” screen which comes from Reuters. Some recent stories in that category have been:

    17th century witch chronicles put online
    Man speeds with wife on hood of minivan?
    Judge lends accused gangster tie for trial
    Pizza maker charged with using mice against competition
    California woman sues after slipping on banana peel
    Camera prettifies subjects, even adds “makeup”

    I’m not sure how stories are selected for that category and I’m not sure I agree with putting this story there.

  • Jerry Nissen

    Interestingly so, it seems that a faculty member basically paid two people to speak and then perform a sex act in public. What does city code say about that? Last I heard, paying for sex acts is not quite legal. Obviously, they have a very odd faculty there. Please keep after them. JN

  • CarlH

    I do think contrasting the Northwestern and Brigham Young stories is interesting (although they are hardly very analogous). But I’m still scratching my head about Mollie’s discussion of the BYU Honor Code suspension. She seems to be chiding the reporters for lack of a discussion of the religious basis for the Honor Code, but then concludes with a link to a Slate (Slate?) article totally devoid of any of that religious background, but is supposedly “interesting” because it “attempt[s] to answer some questions about premarital sex at BYU.” Perhaps Mollie only intended this to show that someone at Slate at least thought it might make sense to do a little more research on a related topic, than rest on a knee-jerk expression of shock. There actually are several good articles, many from the sports press, that actually do look at the religious angle, including an article at Time magazine’s website today, which also invites consideration of the case in contrast to a current Sports Illustrated article about crime and college football players.

  • Bram

    Clearly, as long as no one in a classroom gets penetrated by Christian ideas or by socially conservative ideas, I think most of the administration at Northwestern are absolutely A-OK with whatever else they might be penetrated with. Same with the MSM.

  • Passing By

    Rules are not the primary issue: it’s an honor code that has been violated. That’s the BYU story. As noted above, the Northwestern story is about prostitution.

  • http://theoldadam.wordpress.com Steve Martin

    What is an honor code, if it does not have rules attached to it…and accountability?

  • Dan

    What does “which is of Chicago in Evanston” mean? Is that a typo? What would be accurate is “which is in Evanston, near Chicago.”

  • Henry

    As a Northwestern alum, I read many of these stories from different news sources, but the only one that seemed to seek out differing opinions was the one I’ve linked below. They even managed to find a “sexuality expert” who disagreed with the presentation.

    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/03/03/northwestern-university-professor-defends-explicit-sex-toy-demonstration/

    I should point out that it seems that only Melvoin-Berg was paid and that the two who performed the sex act received no compensation from Northwestern, so I’m not sure it could be called prostitution.

    I’m glad I am already gainfully employed though–with this story all over the news, this isn’t a hot time for any current undergrads to be seeking a job. It’s hard to argue that this resembles serious scholarship or that it will do anything positive to Northwestern’s image, or the endowment for that matter.

  • Passing By

    Of course there are rules involved, but honor is a commitment to the community of which one is a part. In my college, we signed on each test we took a pledge to not cheat. I suppose you can say we were following a “rule”, if you like, but that wasn’t the point.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/ns/nightly_news/

    The link should take you to the BYU segment on tonight’s NBC Nightly News. It was excellent and ended by making the point about commitment.

  • http://catherineguiles.com Cathy G.

    Northwestern grad here, too!
    It is an embarrassing story, but I’m not sure it can be compared to BYU at all, since Northwestern hasn’t been a
    Methodist school for quite some time.
    The rules are different at secular colleges, like it or not.

  • mer

    This seems less about religion and more about social conservatism, a line that this website toes much of the time. From all the coverage I’ve read of this, it was an optional presentation where the two participants didn’t receive compensation. So, no, the $40,000 tuition does not go to this.

    Good religion coverage is important to me; conservative outrage is not.

  • Passing By

    Henry – you are correct: prostitution is the wrong word. Perhaps “pornography”? Also perhaps public lewdness.

  • http://friarsfires.blogspot.com Brett

    I’m also a Northwestern alum and I can add that there is no real church connection in most facets of the school’s daily life; I wouldn’t think it would be much of a news angle at all. There is a seminary in its midst that people have to walk through sometimes to get from one end of campus to the other, but I don’t recall thinking that much about it when I did ;-)

  • John Pack Lambert

    My understanding is that Davies turned himself in. This is an angle that needs even deeper understanding, but mainly it points out that Davies is a human, with human failings, who wants to do better.

    It just shows me how far the sexual revolution has gone for people to be shocked that pre-marital sex would be banned.

    On the other hand in light of incidents like Notre Dame working to halt the investigation of rape accusations against one of its football players last season, Ohio Sttate delaying the penalties of those involved in the memorability sale until the start of next season so it would be at low visibility early games instead of the high visibility end game, and several actions, the amazing thing in many circles is that some people put something above sports.

    I have seen some people claim this was an unneccesary public humiliation of Davies. However BYU sought to not diviluge the details and my guess is the Salt Lake Tribune did it by the truth/rumor push. That is they published a set of allegations that they did not really know, and lucked out on it.

  • John Pack Lambert

    Mer,
    Unless the participatants in the after-calss sex show paid the entire operating costs of the building during the time they were there, it was coming out of tuition.