Reaction: a lovely little story on Wesleyan’s "selectiveness" and stringent admission policies runs on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. Focusing on the increase in applicants (up seven percent!) and the burgeoning amount of rejections, the article depicts the school as a top-notch institution at the height of respectability and popularity.

Coincidence? I think not.

Sure, Wesleyan is a great school and we constantly rank in the top ten of the (somewhat bogus) US World News Report, and our alumni giving rate is up and we’ve renamed the Grill and yada yada yada. Big fucking deal. Wesleyan is great not because of statistics that look good in rankings (93% frosh retention rate! 66% in the top ten of high school class! Wahoo!) but because of the atmosphere of excitement, discovery and creativity that permeates the campus. Pretend I’m a prefrosh. Tell me that we have an 11/1 faculty student ratio (that’s what they say) and I’m pleased. Tell me that the students at Wesleyan are passionate enough to A) fight for what they believe in, B) take risks and C) do something meaningful with their time at college. I’m sold. Sign me up, send me a bumper sticker and tell me to start questioning my sexuality. Welcome to Wes.

Okay, so now let’s imagine that there’s a class dedicated to understanding the contextual basis and sociological implications of pornography. Great! Porn is a huge part of our culture (let alone our computer labs) so why not study the world-at-large? Good. So let’s pretend the course runs smoothly and no one in North College seems to care, let alone acknowledge its existence. But now let’s pretend that the media gets wind of this class. Oh no! Scandal! Quick -- someone tell Bennet to release a press release and smoothe things over. Appease the parents. Soothe the conservative pundits. Put the course under academic review and try to pretend this whole debacle never happened.

Flash forward a year. Pretend that a creative student wants to rile the campus, shake things up a bit, fuck with shit. Imagine he puts up posters announcing the creation of a group known as WesPorn. "Get paid to get laid," his posters proclaim, with tongue pretty much firmly-in-cheek. The student states that he’d like to make a "mockumentary" to examine the issues of porn in an interesting and accessible manner. The media finds out about the posters. Oh no! Scandal! Wes is back in the news Porn U has struck again! Someone had the audacity to put up some controversial posters and he must be punished for it. Quick! Tear down the posters! Send out the hounds! Bennet had better call the student into his office, disclose confidential information, and blame the posters for the increase in violent sexual assaults and harassment on campus.

I think I remember reading somewhere (maybe in a little document known as the Bill of Rights, call me crazy) that people in America have something known as freedom of speech. Which includes the right to put up posters saying whatever the fuck anyone wants to say. (Like saying fuck in the Argus). Postering is not illegal. But, let’s assume that the media is psyched to put Wes back on the front page. "More porn at Wes! Stop the presses!" Fine. There’s no such thing as bad publicity. Still, my favourite thing about the stories featuring WesPorn is the fact that nothing actually happened; the porn wasn’t made, no one got naked , and the movie wasn’t shown in the film series. Posters were put up and torn down. Major story!!!! 

So we get all this press about Porn and Bennet panics. Oh no, he thinks, now people might think that Wesleyan’s a pretty happening place. The students there are interested in the world. We can’t let that happen. Quick, call the parents and alumni on staff at the Times and stop this madness. Whew. Close call. For a week or two, Wesleyan seemed pretty fucking exciting. 

I’m assuming, of course, that this is what happened. I’m extrapolating based on what I know about Dougie B. A). He was the president of NPR and has a pretty good idea about media and its functions. B). He advocated the new slogan "the Independent Ivy" as a slogan to replace "Diversity University" in an attempt to boost Wesleyan’s image in tthe public eye. Students protested. The trustees frowned. Potential for bad press. Wesleyan students protest administrative decision! Quick -- drop the new slogan. Whew. 

Close call.

Let’s go back, for a second, to the hypothetical postering incident. Bennet blamed the student for inciting a "sexually permissive" atmosphere on campus. The higher-ups in North College imply that the porn posterer is responsible for the recent outbreak of rape and assault. Let’s see–putting up signs about the intention to make a porn makes people feel like it’s all right to violate and attack women? Yes, pornography can degrade women. And yes, such things as snuff films and "rape fantasy" porn does exist, and perhaps contribute to the attitude that its acceptable to "conquer" a woman. But posters about porn DO NOT lead to sexual violence. They don’t. They can’t. I refuse to see how the educated people on this campus (remember how selective we are?) would decide that these posters make it okay to be brutes. 

Rape is horrible and it should never happen anywhere, let someplace filled with educated people. The fact that it happens on this campus makes me angry and makes me sad. But had the media not catapulted the school back into the limelight, would Bennet have cared? During senior week, we get to "Wes-Scam." We select the names of people we want to fuck and we get a computer-generated list of people who would fuck us. And this isn’t sexually permissive? WesScam continues (and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t) and no one in North College has said boo. But making a porn implies that students may start to fuck more often, apparently. Oh, dear. We certainly can’t let that happen. Now the public may think that those crazy kids at Wesleyan are morally indecent and lewd. No sex, please, we’re at Wesleyan. 

All this leads me to the point that Bennet and the administration seems excessively concerned about the ways in which Wes is presented to the public via the media. We need to seize on this anxiety and exploit it to the best of our abilities. I hope the media covers the Save Howard Bernstein rally, and I hope we can generate enough publicity to make Bennet realize what a ridiculous thing it would be to lose such an amazing professor. We need to capitalize on public exposure -- media exploits absolutely, so let’s absolutely exploit the media. Apparently, the way to Bennet’s heart is not through his office hours or his emailbox; it’s through the press. So fuck with shit. And tell the press. "bad" publicity makes Bennet take action, and that’s what we need. Back at NPR, he ran a media conglomerate. Hoist him on his own petard.