Some additional spins on the issues Susan Wagle has raised about state schools' accountability to tax payers, particularly when it comes to using sexually explicit material in school-sponsored events:

James Madison University has recently sponsored SexFest 2003, a nominally educational event that included a game in which students donned glasses that blurred their vision (thus simulating drunkenness) and then tried to fit a condom on a fake penis. The event was brought to the attention of a state legislator, who then complained to JMU's president about how the school was spending tax dollars. The president responded by defending SexFest, which he said aimed to teach students about safe sex and to encourage responsibility. In a written statement, he admitted that some people "have received an erroneous impression about the event because of its title, which is actually a misnomer."

Such campus events are common. At UCSB, for instance, a recent "sexual health and diversity fair" entitled "Sex Affair" featured (Critical Mass readers will love this) a Tunnel of Love. A thirty-foot tunnel made from adjoining tents, the Tunnel of Love allowed participants to see and touch various birth control devices and sex toys while learning about safer sex. The tunnel organizers were especially proud of their exhibit on anal sex. As one told the student paper, "Many people think only homosexuals have anal sex. ... But actually, 20 percent of heterosexuals on campus engage in it, and for the most part, condoms are not used. That's why it's important to inform people on how to do it correctly and safely." The first 500 people through the tunnel received a free bag of "goodies"--a condom, lubricant, instructions on how to use both, and lots of informational literature. Outside the tunnel, there were races to see who could put on condoms and make dental dams fastest (I assume that the condom race involved fake penises, but the article was not specific about that point).

As these examples make clear, the aim of the people who organize events like this is to combine shock value with humor to try to entice people into participating (one Tunnel of Love organizer specifically mentions that the tunnel idea grew in part out of a desire to give participants some privacy). There is much to be said for trying to inject a sense of fun into potentially uncomfortable subjects. But at the same time, that strategy slips very readily into a confrontational attitude that works against the ostensible aim of such fairs: if your goal is to create an environment that encourages people to learn about sex by making them feel comfortable and safe, then it is patently counterproductive to insinuate that those who object to the explicit nature of your project, or who don't want to learn about certain kinds of sexual activity, or who question whether such events promote promiscuity, are just a bunch of repressed reactionaries who are clearly no fun in bed. Yet events such as SexFest and Sexual Affair do on some level dare people to make such objections--and do cast those who object as prudes.

One instance of a campus sex fair that took the game of moral chicken to its furthest possible point: Penn State's 2001 "Sex Faire," which featured "orgasm bingo," "pin the clitoris on the vulva," a "tent of consent" (where groups of two or more students could pass through a consent "checkpoint" and then spend two minutes behind a private curtain) and a keynote speaker who was an outspoken advocate of pedophilia. Sex Faire followed fast on the heels of Penn State's notorious "C---fest;" some outraged Pennsylvania lawmakers tried to crack down on the school, but got nowhere. Penn State president Graham Spanier was questioned for four hours by state legislators; he defended the free speech of PSU students and event organizers, and that was pretty much that. The state legislature voted to take a very small punitive bite out of PSU's budget, and the case was closed.

Now Western Washington University at Bellingham's National Outdoor Intercourse Day looks like it is bidding to follow in Penn State's footsteps. The "Day" actually lasted a week, and this year it featured condom hunts, a masturbation information table, and a "Pornfest" in which students viewed pornographic images in order to determine how they feel about them (Pornfest concludes with "Porn and Popcorn," a screening of award-winning porn films, with free popcorn for all). "Our goal is to help students sort out sexuality issues with clear and concise information," a student organizer told the school paper. "We want to get students communicating about sex. This is a perfect opportunity to do that in a safe, fun and open way."

All events were voluntary, but there were still some who objected. One senior, who is a member of Campus Crusade for Christ, told the student paper that she wished the event would emphasize some of the crucial issues surrounding sex--like relationships, and sexual violence, and the fact that abstinence is a valid lifestyle choice. Instead, Outdoor Intercourse Day featured a lecture by Allena Gabosch, director of the Wet Spot, a "sex-positive" community center in Seattle. Gabosch is a self-described sexual activist whose organization runs, among other things, a weekly "Pansexual BDSM Play Party" and a "Whip Enthusiasts Group." Her lecture at UW aimed to dispel the "myths" surrounding "polyamory" (having sexual relationships with more than one person at a time). Campus religious groups attended Outdoor Intercourse events and passed out leaflets in protest; to their credit, event organizers made no attempt to stop them.

The comments appended to the student paper coverage of Outdoor Intercourse Day criticize the university for spending tax dollars on it. According to an event organizer, tax dollars were not spent on the event, but $400 of student fees were. WWU-Bellingham's Sexual Awareness Center, which sponsored the event, is also supported by student fees, and has a $3,100 annual budget. Conceivably, WWU-Bellingham students who object to Outdoor Intercourse Day have a legitimate gripe about how their money is being spent. But at the same time, the total amount of money involved is negligible; odds are that even if the university failed to fund the event next year, enough money could be raised independently to keep the program running.

And odds are that this is true across the board. JMU's SexFest, for example, was organized by a small group of students not affiliated with any school-funded group, and did not itself receive any school funding. The event organizers invited four campus groups who do get school funding to participate: they were the Reality Educators Advocating Campus Health, Campus Assault Response (which runs a campus assault help line), Equal (a women's rights group); and One in Four, (a men's group that aims to raise awareness of assault and rape). Likewise, Penn State's Sex Faire cost a total of $50, which organizers paid for out of pocket. Nonetheless, it's worth watching where the money comes from when events of this sort are staged--the price tag on Penn State's notorious C---fest, for example, was $10,000, and was paid for with student fees.

If student fees are being used to fund these events, can tax dollars be far behind? Conservatives may have won the economic war (socialsm is really dead) but they are in full retreat in the culture war. (Over at View from the Right, counterrevolution. net/vfr, there are lengthy discussions on the acceptance by the neocons of the losses in the culture war.) On campus the Crusaders for Christ are fighting a rear-guard action but one can only imagine what will be taking place at these "sex fairs" in four or five years. My point in the KU affair was that there was too much "therapeutic blather" (I love that term) on campus and because it is "taught" in the classroom it give permission for the emergence of sex fairs. I don't know where this will lead, but IMO it can't be anywhere good. However, the adults in charge of our colleges will not confront the obvious for fear of being associated with Wangle and considered rubes. And there lies the slippry slope.

Charles, I'm sorry but I disagree. I see the left going down in flames on all fronts. Americans are very smart. They're seeing it. And I'm not from the right or the left -- more of a pox on both houses standpoint.

The Jayson Blair fiasco at The Times has dealt a deadly blow to the quota system. Something nobody has commented upon: When you give a young black man a promotion for commiting fraud (as The Times did), you are destroying that man morally. The news that Patricia Ireland was hired as CEO of the YWCA stunned me. It was as if the left is determined to lay down the gauntlet. The left is going to lose on this one, too. The abortion extravaganza is about to founder. And the juvenile antics of the SexFests aren't winning over anybody outside of the immediate participants and friends.

In our most liberal cities (like San Francisco and New York) a growing number of people have watched what actually happens to the graduates of our colleges who are indoctrinated in the dreary religion of the perpetual malcontent. Some of us have actually recognized that there is an army of women in their late 30s and older who will never experience the company of a man on a date again. Men have tired of the defamation and they've been walking away for a long time. Many of us have witnessed first hand the devastation of our friends who chose to take the route of the Peter Pan homosexual.

The American electorate is very smart, although its wisdom can be seen more often in the long run, not the short. I predict a long period of return to traditional values, an attempt to reconstruct marriage and family, and even a return to religion (albeit of the cafeteria style). The run of the perpetual adolescent as the idol of our society is at an end. It looks worst just before the cycle breaks.

I predict a long period of return to traditional values, an attempt to reconstruct marriage and family, and even a return to religion (albeit of the cafeteria style).

I agree with this predictions...with a twist...the reconstruction of marriage and family, for example, will include gay couples in a completely unremarkable way. The return to religion will not be a return to any kind of religious dogma, but rather a return to faith -- the belief in living one's life in a moral manner and being part of a community.

Mike, I second your comments.

There is an intriguing disconnect (or is it a connect) between the abundance of college Sex-fests,faires, tunnels, etc. and the continuing activity of the sex-avervse evidenced by Erin's blogs on Portland State and the Harvard ice-phallus.

Interestingly, sex has become (actually sex has always been interesting as a physical matter but it now appears to be getting interesting from a political viewpoint) a focal point for some 'new-wave' idelogical battles.

I suspect that the proponents of sex fests (God I miss college) are driven by their own ideals of liberating sex from societal restraints. I am sure that at least some of those proponents consider themselves feminists (call it the sex-positive branch of feminism if you will) or support actively various rights for gays, lesbians, transgenders, etc. Sex as liberation from societal or political restraint is not a right-wing approach.

At the same time, and perhaps as a counter-balance, you have the sex-averse branch of feminism that tends to view sex, or at least that sex involving a mutually consenting blend of sexual organs, through an ideological prism that they would identify as being of the left.

Fertile grounds for some fierce internicen [sp?] strife.

I find the whole thing fascinating.

[N.B. I have changed my e-mail address. Apparently my old address is a bit selective in what e-mails it allows to reache me.]

One minor nit, in case people go looking for one of the institutions you mention here:

It's Western Washington University, abbreviated WWU, and located on the web at wwu.edu, nother the other way around as you had it.

FWIW, I heard the Campus Crusade rep at Western on a local radio station here. While I do sympathize somewhat with her objections to the event (pretty one-sided) the rest of her presentation was fairly lame--as the host interviewed her, most of her answers were variants of "I don't know."

Stolypin,

One of the fascinating aspects of being married to a Filipina woman is discovering that the traditional societies have methods of dealing with all of the sexual issues you've mentioned. American society has gone through a 50 year cycle of trashing tradition, leaving us at a loss to deal with the most basic sexual issues.

My favorite writer is Henry Miller. Miller's writing makes it very clear that even in the 1920s and 1930s people were engaging in every imagineable kind of sexual activity. It is a conceit that we are doing something new.

The obsession of the past 50 years has been the demand that others be publicly confronted with one's sexual behavior. The sexual activists have been determined that we should all acknowledge and tolerate everything. It's time to ask: Why? What do we gain by doing that? What do we lose? The great statement of this is South Park's "Tolerance Camp" episode. I recommend it. Everything has a limit.

Over the past year, I've been attended a black Baptist church. The joyful acceptance of sexuality is in startling contrast to the grim Catholic tradition in which I was raised. When I was much younger, I was quite determined to be in the vanguard of whites who integrated black communities. I figured that blacks should accept integration just like whites. White friends have often asked me why, and this is my response. "Black culture has some good values to offer and I want access to that." One of the great values that traditional, religious black culture has to offer is an integration of the spiritual and sexual that is quite refreshing.

If you want to read a definitive account of these deadly events, go to www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/01/rosenbaum.htm (hope I got that right - it's the Atlantic Online, January 2003). It's called "Sex Week at Yale," and is by Ron Rosenbaum.

Stephen, you are quite correct - there is nothing new under the sun - it is the exposure that is different. I remember talking to my father (way back in the 60s) about pot and how cool it was (or something like that). His response was . . . "so what else is new." He then related stories about starting a musical career in the late 1920s, what he did, what he saw, etc. and how there was nothing I could tell him that he hadn't seen 40 years ago. Kind of deflated my infatuation - which I guess was the point.

Purcell, yes, a very interesting article - as is just about everything in the Atlantic recently.

The "sexual revolution" like most revolutions, brought about a mixture of positive and negative changes.

The negative changes are well-documented by most episodes of "Jerry Springer" but we cannot forget the positive changes, such as the gay and lesbian civil rights movement, and the increased freedom for individuals to make their own life choices about sexual relations through things like birth control.

I have a daughter going off to college this fall, and friends have advised me to have a copy of the school paper sent to my home. That way, I'll be sure to find out if I'm financing any sex fests. BTW, my mother's advice to me when I was heading off to college: Sex is an adult activity, and an adult pays his/her own way.

"BTW, my mother's advice to me when I was heading off to college: Sex is an adult activity, and an adult pays his/her own way."

That sounds exactly like what I'll tell my daughter.

Good to see someone pointing out the linkage between the KU course and the tunnel of whacking syndrome. As universities validate certain subjects by incorporating them into the course offerings, they then become "legitimate" areas into which tax dollars and/or student fees are pumped.

It's tempting to posit some great backlash sweeping through higher education as those paying the bills revolt, or the continued dumbing down of higher education.

But what's really happening is a simple process of natural selection in which those students who acquire an education in college move on into jobs and professions and those who construct tunnels of whoopee and take all the fashionable courses in global wobbling and condom fitting end up as cart retreival associates at Walmart.

This isn't a prediction--I see it happening every year with my graduating seniors.

Let me emphasize the point here about education: the steadily expanding number of courses being offered comes at the expense of the more basic ones which traditionally constituted an education. Implicitly what universities are saying is that watching carton frogs humping is the equivalent to a course in abormal psych or calculus or quantitative analysis or Shakespeare.

And of course it's a lot more fun! It was hardly surprising to see how students loved the KU sex course--think about the papers and the exams! But the same thing applies to all of these courses: insofar as they have any content whatsoever, it's basically the same content as a course in plumbing.

It's sad to walk into a local coffee shop and see the waitress as a college graduate, but hey, at least she knows all about the disappearance of the rain forest.

Personally, I would prefer to have the money I spend for my stepson's college education fund something like a Sex Fest -- which at least gives straight facts about a fact of life -- than a religious event, which happens all too frequently.

Sure, abstinence is a valid lifestyle choice. But it's also one that flies in the face of human biology. It's the ultimate hypocrisy of the religious right -- which is saying something, given the level of garbage that the right wing is capable of producing.