Thursday, March 03, 2011

Higher Education Has Just Jumped The Shark

Remember when this used to be satirical?
Really. Northwestern University defends after-class live sex demonstration


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.”

The optional, non-credit demo followed psychology Prof. John Michael Bailey’s sexuality class. Nearly 600 students are in Bailey’s class this quarter, and most didn’t stick around for the after-class show, which featured four members of Chicago’s fetish community describing “BDSM,” or bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism.

Oh, come on. (Poor word choice?) Even the stated reasons for this bout of exhibitionism is prurient in nature. Pretending there is actual educational value in the porn show is laughable.

And university types wonder why conservatives hold them in such ill repute. It is because of garbage like this. There are no intellectual standards any more. Yes, it is true that deviant sexual practices are a fact of human existence. It is also true that, from an intellectual point of view, they are boring as shit. Literally. Human feces is also a fact of human existence. Maybe Northwestern should sponsor a class where students can do a number two on stage and take turns pawing through it. It would be as "educationally valid" as turning a Northwestern classroom into a Tijuana sex show.

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