Do campus feminists have any respect for freedom of speech anymore? Certainly not at the University of Connecticut where 17 women filed sexual harassment charges against a student-run television show for allegedly creating a “hostile environment.”
Certainly University of Connecticut students Joseph Kingsley and Peter Pietro did not design their show to appeal to campus feminists. “I Did Your Mother” is their hour-long attempt at Howard Stern-style humor.
As Associated Press described it, “A recent broadcast included simulated sex between a man and woman and discussions of sexual positions and techniques. The hosts also take phone calls from both men and women.
Of course such a show does not have a chance in today’s campus environment because it commits the only crime that universities teach their student’s to recognize any more — it is offensive to somebody.
As senior Cheryl Eureka, who plans to file a sexual harassment complaint against the show with the dean, told The Associated Press, “It’s terrible. It’s offensive to everyone who goes here.” She elaborated on her comments to The Hartford Courant,
It’s just the climate here that makes this kind of behavior acceptable and doesn’t act against it. The university has this diversity plan and wants to make UConn a more welcoming place. If they don’t step up and address this kind of behavior, then their diversity plan is just a piece of paper.
Well, of course — Kingsley and Pietro offended somebody. How dare the administration not punish them? Why should anyone ever to tolerate anything that’s terrible and/or offensive just for some abstract idea about free speech and freedom of thought?
Oddly enough, a Google search turns up some rather sexually explicit materials that Eureka herself wrote related to the “Vagina Monologues” for a Women’s Studies course at the University of Connecticut. I will not quote that here, but you can see for yourself.
Give them credit — one thing Women’s Studies program do excel at is the careful cultivation of hypocrisy.
Sources:
`I Love Lucy,’ It’s Not. Grace E. Merritt, The Hartford Courant, May 2, 2002.
Student-run TV show drawing protest. Associated Press, May 2, 2002.