This year's recipients of the annual "Polly Awards" for extraordinarily absurd campus programs.
Top Five Outrages on College Campuses
This year's recipients of the annual "Polly Awards" for extraordinarily absurd campus programs.
Professors won't teach the Federalist Papers, but they will lecture on the "History of the Vibrator." Colleges refuse to fund anything having to do with "morals," but they readily provide money to bring porn stars to speak. Where there was once History 101, there is now "Sex Toys 101." A student is lauded and given course credit for his thesis on "Gay Men of Color in Porn," while students and professors are incensed when a cardinal in the Catholic Church cites church doctrine on sexual ethics during a commencement speech at a Catholic university.
Outrageous politicization and double standards continue to abound in higher education, and the Collegiate Network has once again chronicled the worst of those abuses in its 7th annual Campus Outrage Awards. "Pollys" are given each year on April Fools Day to highlight the noxious tendencies of radical faculty and students at the nation's colleges.
Here are the 2004 Polly Award recipients:
1. (Tie) Sex-Week at Yale
This year at Yale University, Valentine's Day was far from ordinary. Instead of making plans for a special date (or bemoaning the lack thereof) students at Yale were preoccupied with the popular events of "Sex Week at Yale."
Organized by Yale senior Eric Rubenstein, using Yale funds and with the full support of Yale faculty and administrators, "Sex Week at Yale" was devised in order to allow students "to explore sex in a safe and open environment."
Events at Sex-Week were varied but consistently vulgar. One Yale professor gave a lecture on the "History of the Vibrator." Students gave talks on the secrets of great sex, hooking up, and how to be a better lover. At "Sex Toys 101," people who admitted to never having used a sex toy were given miniature vibrators.
The highlight of the week for most, however, was the presence of Devinn Lane, a bisexual porn star from Wicked Pictures — the adult film company who co-sponsored many of the Sex-Week events.
Multicultural "Scholarship" Porn at UC Santa Barbara
On Oct. 27, 2003, the Multicultural Center at UC Santa Barbara sponsored a presentation by UCSB senior Alejandro Juarez on the topic of "F*$%ing with Stereotypes: Gay Men of Color in Porn" as part of their "Race Matters Series."
The presentation, which was part of Juarez's thesis project for his Chicano Studies major, included showing clips from pornographic films and a lengthy discussion of how negative stereotypes of men of color in gay pornography adversely affects the men who watch it.
Vice-Chancellor of Student Affairs Michael Young lauded Jaurez's project, "I thought that it was an intellectual exploration of gay pornography in the 'Race Matters Series.' I was pleased. It showed that we'd be willing to explore difficult dialogues at this University."
The UCSB Multicultural Center is, of course, funded largely by public money.
2. UC Berkeley Uses Student Funds to Oppose Racial Privacy Initiative
Since Californians abolished affirmative action in 1996, the next logical step seemed to be to get rid of the question of race on college applications altogether, or at least that is what UC Regent Ward Connerly thought.
Connerly authored Proposition 54, known as the Racial Privacy Initiative (RPI), which, if it had passed would have removed the question of race from not only college applications in California, but other government forms as well.
However, with the help of mandatory student fees, Prop 54 was defeated. The California Patriot reports that the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) and Graduate Assembly (GA) spent $31,000 on a campus campaign against Prop 54. The ASUC and Graduate Assembly expenditures on the campaign include mandatory student fees.
According to the Daily Californian, the move was in clear violation of the ASUC's own spending rules which forbid the use of funds for off-campus political activities.
3. Northwestern: The Boy Who Cried Hate
In November 2003, racist graffiti was found in some of Northwestern's dorms and the student center. The school's biggest newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, gave the story front-page coverage. Student leaders mobilized and began lobbying for mandatory expulsion for anyone who committed a "hate crime." Then came Xander Saide.
On November 5, Saide, a freshman majoring in communications, told reporters someone had written "Die Spic" on his door. Four days later, he filed a police report claiming that he'd been attacked at knifepoint outside his dorm.
Student leaders immediately asked minority students to wear black and remain silent for one day. The next day, all NU students were asked to wear black before coming to a "stop the hate" rally. The overall mood of outrage was stoked by the campus newspaper.
On November 12, Saide tearfully spoke in front of the rally, which drew over 500 people. He is quoted in The Daily Northwestern as saying, "The feeling of a knife being pulled on me is still with me, and I don't know if it will ever go away."
The next day, as Evanston police officials interviewed Saide further, the boy confessed, telling police that the "hate crimes" were a hoax.
Northwestern has yet to take disciplinary action against Xander Saide.
4. Conservatives are Too Stupid for Duke
On February 9, the Duke Conservative Union (DCU) published an advertisement in the campus newspaper, The Chronicle, that included two quotations from Duke President Nan Keohane:
"My message is straightforward: Diversity is an important value that must be nurtured and used in higher education."
—Nan Keohane, November 1997
"…people learn better when they are challenged by things that they don't expect, when they do not have all their prejudices and assumptions confirmed, but instead have some of their ideas shaken up as part of an education."
—Nan Keohane, February 2003
The DCU then proceeded to list the party affiliation statistics of Duke's deans and eight University departments, which revealed an approximate Democrat-Republican ratio of 17-1. Then they asked a simple question: "Is this diversity?"
5. Cardinal Chastised for Taking Catholic Positions
Catholic universities are generally honored when high-ranking Vatican officials drop by for a visit. Georgetown University, however, is no ordinary Catholic university.
Dean of Georgetown College, Jane McAuliffe arranged for Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria, head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, to give the commencement address.
The cardinal's name has been raised as a possible successor to Pope John Paul II. Furthermore, he is an expert on inter-religious dialogue, particularly between Islam and Christianity. Given his credentials, he sounded like an ideal candidate for a commencement speaker.
To the disappointment of some in the Georgetown administration, Cardinal Arinze did not deliver a politically correct address. Instead he chose to offer Georgetown's graduating class a little moral guidance, reiterating the church's teaching on sexual ethics. "In many parts of the world, the family is under siege," the cardinal said. "It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as is seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by divorce."
Theology professor Theresa Sanders was so appalled at Cardinal Arinze's comments that she stormed off the stage, as did many students. In response to the brouhaha, Dean McAuliffe sent an email to all students of the College. She apologized for any offense and offered counseling sessions to those who suffered psychological trauma as a result of the speech, pleading that the university expected the Cardinal to talk about Christian-Muslim relations. President Jack DeGioia also refused to defend the cardinal, issuing statements reaffirming Georgetown's commitment to students of all sexual orientations.
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