Center for American Progress Campus Progress

Campus Informer - February 20, 2007

Shower sex, racist parties, and more college news from all over the country.

By Annika Carlson, Hope College
Tuesday February 20, 2007

 
Co-ed showering adds to school’s moral bankruptcy
Yale University

It’s not often that a college administrator stoops to cleaning dorm showers—but when Professor Jonathan Holloway, master of Yale’s Calhoun College, sent a mass email to its students, he was combating a different kind of dirty. In what he called “the most awkward college-wide email [he’d] ever had to send,” Holloway warned students against using dorm showers for sexual encounters. Apparently, it’s not an epidemic but rather one adventurous couple whom other students “have come across… having the time of their lives in a shower stall” several times so far this semester. Rather than revealing the couple’s identity to the college’s 300-some residents, Holloway admonished them anonymously, warning that “continued brazen public displays of affection will only invite public embarrassment.”

While Holloway’s email indicates his hopes that the couple stops on their own accord—“I beg of you,” he wrote, “let’s not go there”—others are more deeply offended by co-ed showers. Dan Gelernter, a Calhoun sophomore, condemned the steamy showers on Critical Mass, a blog that aims to “connect collegiate conservatives.” To Gelernter, the shower incidents marked “Yale’s continuing descent into the depths of moral degradation.” Gelernter pointed to the “moral vacuum that has been created by Yale intellectuals” as the source of the “pathetic and disgusting” co-ed behavior. Who knew the road to Hell was paved with shower sex encouraged by intellectualism?
 

More racist incidents surface across the country
National

After racially themed parties at Johns Hopkins, Texas A& M University, and several other schools garnered significant negative media attention last semester, you’d think people would realize such events are offensive and not worth the bad publicity they create. Several similar parties, however, have already surfaced this semester.

At Macalester College, two students went to a “politically incorrect party” with a two-part costume: One dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member and led the other, a student wearing blackface, by a noose. One of those students, who spoke to the Macalester student newspaper anonymously, said that he received no hostility in response to his costume, and that “there was a variety of equally offensive costumes, and given the variety, the response targeted to one costume in particular is unfair.” The school’s president circulated a letter condemning the party as “insensitive” and contrary to “the College’s values and mission.”

At Long Island University, several students created a mock terrorist hostage video in which they adopted stereotypical Middle Eastern accents and threatened a rubber duck, their dorm’s mascot. As a result of their actions, they were fired from their jobs as resident assistants. The students filed a wrongful termination and discrimination suit against the college, arguing that they were treated more harshly than several female RAs who created a video that similarly depicted Middle Easterners, but were not fired.

To celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. day, a group of Clemson University students hosted a “gangsta”-themed party where attendees “wore gang-like apparel, stuffed their pants to make their bottoms look larger, put fake grills on their teeth and painted their bodies black.” The party, as others before it, was advertised on Facebook, but there’s a new twist to this one—attendees can find pictures of their offensive partying on The Smoking Gun, a website that publishes “exclusive documents” often “obtained from government and law enforcement sources.” Congratulations, you’re famous for being a bigot!

Boston College’s student newspaper covered the offensive party trend, arguing that such events “do not stand alone in relation to other campuses across the country.” Experts attribute the rise in such incidents are caused to racial tensions and increasingly prevalent technology “from Web sites such as Facebook.com to cell-phone cameras, which can capture any incident at any time.” Either way, we wish they’d just stop, already.

 
Tree huggers become tree dwellers
UC Berkeley

Turns out tree houses have significant potential as activism outlets. Environmental activists at UC Berkeley took to the trees in December to protest the leveling of over 40 oak trees to make way for a new sport center on campus, living full time in a tree through storms and earthquakes. One of the first participants, former Berkeley mayoral candidate Zachary RunningWolf, wants the building to be built on a different location. “We landmark buildings that are 80 to 100 years old,” he told the Daily Californian when the protest started, “but are willing to kill oaks that are over 200 years old.” Since early December, more students and local activists joined the protest, supplementing the tree-dwellers with a tent encampment that lasted over a month before police officers shut it down due to safety concerns.

At the end of January, a county judge placed a temporary hold on the university’s construction plans, citing concerns about seismic activity on the site due to its proximity to the Hayward fault. This week she clarified her decision, saying that the university can pursue construction contracts but cannot start physical alterations until further research on the area is completed. While both sides call the ruling a victory, the lawsuit primarily centers on the viability and safety of building on a potentially unsound site, not on the oaks. As Daily Californian columnist Ryan Gorcey put it, the decision “was for seismic safety reasons—for people. So people could be safe. Not trees.” Oh well. Living in a tree is pretty groovy anyway.

Groundbreaking beer pong research
George Washington University

Sure, you see the grime collecting in the water cup, but can beer pong actually transmit germs? Two GW students decided to find out whether the gross-out factor reflects bacteria content. Aaron Heffner and Ben Morrissey, both seniors, got eight of their friends to play beer pong for three hours, going through a 30-rack and using brand new ping pong balls and plastic cups. After all the players’ hard work, the game was left until the morning, when samples were taken from each cup.
 
Turns out you might have been right to worry. Heffner and Morrissey found bacteria in every sample, including high levels of bacterium similar to salmonella, pneumonia and E. coli. The most infested cup, unsurprisingly, was the water cup.
 
Despite the findings of their research, Heffner and Morrissey see no reason to quit the game completely. They recommend frequently changing the water cup and drinking from a separate cup, rather than sharing the beer cups. “There is no reason our report should prevent you from getting drunk,” said Morrissey. “But we’re happy to be breaking ground in the evolutionary field of drinking game biology.”

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