Week in Review

Wednesday, June 12, 1996

College-Sponsored Pornography

The aesthetes of the Dartmouth Film Society invited the campus to plumb the depths of the pornographic and the perverse with a series of films centered around 'Sex in the Cinema' shown in Spaulding Auditorium throughout fall term.

Movies ran the gamut from the mildly erotic, to the homoerotic, and even to the scatological. 'Daddy and the Muscle Academy' was essentially a slide show of drawings depicting men engaged in homosexual sex. A number of the sketches featured a prison or Nazi theme.

'Female Misbehavior' was a series of short films, some depicting violent sex. According to notes distributed by the Film Society at the film's showing, one of the shorts was 'an attempt to introduce the audience to a world in which 't*t torture' is not so shocking or even violent.' Another segment from 'Female Misbehavior' featured former porn actress Annie Sprinkle. Ms. Sprinkle's act in the film consisted of inserting a viewing device into her genitals and allowing the camera a close peek.

'In the Realm of the Senses,' however, topped the rest of the Film Society's choices for sheer depravity (and questionable artistic merit) with explicit depictions of castration and pederasty.

Among the cineastes who selected the films was Christopher Kelly '96, who wrote in the Spare Rib, a now defunct feminist publication, that his favorite part of pornographic films is watching the male ejaculate.

Gay and Lesbian Studies Arrives

Winter term the College began offering a course entitled 'Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies,' a course which may become the foundation for a Gay and Lesbian Studies department. The course is taught by Professors Susan Ackerman and Annelise Orleck, both open lesbians.

The following are excerpts from the course description for 'Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies' from Dartmouth's Organizations, Regulations, and Courses:

'This course introduces students to an emergent discipline that encompasses research and creative work in a variety of fields, from literature to medical science, of interest to students of all sexual orientations.

'This course will provide an introduction to the modern construction of homosexuality and the concomitant participation in and resistance of gay men and lesbians to that construction.

'The course will also examine the impact of the AIDS crisis on gay and lesbian communities and identities and the ways it has led to new self-definitions and new forms of political activism.'

An Artist's Dirty Laundry

While the Dartmouth Film Society was exhibiting pornography disguised as art fall term, administrators at the Hopkins Center were trying to pass off radical feminist politics as the same.

A work entitled 'Family Values,' by Boston artist Meredith Davis, was put on display in the glass case in the front of the Hopkins Center — a major artery of student traffic — during Domestic Violence Awareness Month (October) . The work consisted of several dozen white tee shirts, in small and toddler sizes, hanging on clotheslines. Beneath the shirts lay a mound of feathers — the remnants of a down pillow — soaked with copious amounts of simulated blood.

Across the display case was emblazoned in red letters, 'For richer, for poorer... 'til death do us part.'

Ms. Davis explained that the piece was meant 'to instigate conversation' about the theme of domestic violence — and presumably to suggest that marriage is a diseased institution. Withe the work's reliance on a passerby's revulsion to blood for its artistic impact, Ms. Davis' piece was also an aesthetic disaster on the scale of 'Piss Christ.'

Abortion at Dartmouth

In the winter term The Dartmouth Review discovered that the College's policies ensure that no counseling and no disincentive — not even a monetary obstacle — come between a student and an abortion.

Specifically, a student with an insurance policy through the Dartmouth Student Group Health Plan (DSGHP) receives 80% coverage for most procedures performed at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. For abortion, however, the policy is different — the DSGHP picks up $350 of a $360 tab, or 97%, leaving a student to pay a mere $10 in cash for 'termination of pregnancy.' No waiting period is required, nor is any form of counseling — such as that offered by groups like Planned Parenthood of West Lebanon — mandated.

Women's Health Program director Jan Sundnas refused to speak to The Dartmouth Review regarding the issue, as did Dr. Jack Turco, the director of Dick's House, Dartmouth's infirmary.

Faculty 'Diversity'

The Dartmouth administration publicly makes great pains to ensure intellectual 'diversity' in its faculty. As The Dartmouth Review discovered in the fall, however, the administration's definition of diversity has little to do with a professor's perspective and much to do with a professor's skin color.

The Dartmouth Review went to nearby town halls for a look at voting records, which in New Hampshire list residents' political party affiliation. Records were found for 66 out of 115 full, associate, and assistant professors in six liberal arts departments — economics, English, government, history, philosophy, and religion. 79% were Democrats, 18% were independent, and 3% were Republicans.

Dartmouth has an entire office devoted exclusively to hiring more minority professors — the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity. If intellectual diversity is the College's aim as it maintains, then more, say, black professors in the chemistry department must result in more intellectual diversity. Ergo, one's likelihood to explore all sides of an issue must be dependent on one's skin color. To one who accepts that humans are fundamentally equal, regardless of skin color, this seems repugnant.

On the other hand, when there is a dearth of Republicans in six liberal arts departments, the administration takes no action. So a professor's politics must not affect his likelihood to explore all sides of an issue. As anyone who has ever entered a classroom will probably attest, however, this is a rather tenuous assumption — and it underscores that when 'intellectual diversity' gets in the way of liberal politics in the classroom, something has got to give.

Activism '90's-Style

During winter term the 1997 class council sponsored 'Singled Out at Dartmouth,' based on the MTV dating show 'Singled Out,' in which undersexed men and women narrow down a group of potential mates according to characteristics such as hair color, eye color, etc.

Before the Dartmouth version took place, complaints that the event was 'heterosexist' spurred the class council to add a special 'sexual preference' category. Still, a group of angry wymyn showed up clad in black tee shirts and complained that the program was both racist and sexist. Sexist because women were asked questions about sleeping habits and underwear preferences which the men didn't have to answer. And racist because some criteria such as hairstyle could eliminate entire racial groups in one fell swoop.

With Friends Like These...

The College unveiled revisions and planned changes to its housing policy which would place Greek organizations in a sort of double jeopardy.

Next fall, every house will be required to fill to its residential capacity (as determined by the College) or be denied College billing services. College billing adds the housing costs for a student living in a Greek house to his College bill, then forwards the money to his or her fraternity or sorority. This ensures that students living in a Greek house do indeed pay their organization for housing. As several Greek members explained, this service is one of the only advantages of affiliation with the College. Loss of the service could place numerous fraternities in a financial bind.

At the same time, the Office of Residential Life released a report recommending that students not be allowed to live in a Greek house until their sophomore summer. Since students may not join houses until sophomore year anyway, this would cut by one-third the number of students available to live in Greek houses.

The College maintains that it is merely trying to 'help' fraternities and sororities by 'encouraging' them to fill their houses. Making it ever more difficult for them to do so seems like an odd way to help.

Campus Uproar

The year saw a slew of what some students called 'hate crimes' and evidence of 'institutionalized racism, sexism, and homophobia' at the College.

The incidents began over the summer when a Beta Theta Pi brother allegedly read an offensive poem at a Wednesday fraternity meeting. The poem contained explicit sexual descriptions and offensive references to a female American Indian
student. During winter term a copy of the poem found its way into the public eye.

The incidents continued several weeks into winter term when a '98 scrawled the word 'Chinks' on his neighbors' door in the Choates dormitory cluster.

Later in the term the script for a skit performed by Alpha Chi Alpha pledges at a house event was removed from the house and shown to College administrators. The script used vulgar terms for female genitals, and referred to ugly women as 'grimbos' — a common campus slang.

The officers of seven campus minority organizations met to form a group called 'Colors' to address these incidents. Their first action was to post on dormitory bulletin boards a flyer advertising an 'anti-hatred' rally with a Swastika superimposed on a silhouette of the United States. An 'emergency town meeting' was then held to discuss the 'Chinks' incident. Alexis Sainz '96 took the microphone at this meeting, demanded mandatory sensitivity training for incoming freshmen, and concluded by screaming, 'I won't take this sh*t!'

The following Friday, the aforementioned 'rally against hatred' took place in front of the Parkhurst administration building. College President James O. Freedman encouraged the crowd to 'pluck a rose of sweetness and harmony out of thorns of hatred and bigotry.' John Barros '96, who has been described by the Dartmouth as 'pensive' and 'articulate,' took to the microphone and shouted a string of racial epithets, announcing, 'I'm here to make everyone as uncomfortable as possible.'

A few days later, a group of students dumped a large pile of manure on Beta's and Alpha Chi's lawns. In each pile they stuck a sign which demanded that the brothers of the fraternities 'Deal with your sh*t' by releasing the poem and skit script. The perpetrators, who remained anonymous, were referred to in the Dartmouth as a group of 'concerned students.'

Responding to demands that the script be released, Matt Richardson '97, then president of Alpha Chi, read the pledge skit script to a group of students in Brace Commons. A discussion followed. Numerous audience members, including a woman wearing a sweatshirt which said 'Frats Suck,' demanded definitions for slang terms used in the skit, including a vulgar word for female genitals and the word 'spanking' — slang for masturbation. An argument ensued regarding the offensiveness of the word 'd*ck' relative to similar words for the female counterpart. A female audience member demanded that the '98's who authored the skit come forward and 'f*ckin' apologize,' while another denounced a Beta brother's comments as 'b*llshit.'

The Beta poem was subsequently printed by another group of anonymous students in a flyer detailing other recent acts of supposed racism, sexism, and harassment of homosexuals on campus.

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