Northwestern University Class Has Live Sex Demo For Those Who Stayed After.
Bailey said that while he regretted allowing the Feb. 21 sex toy demonstration he also does not believe those who were offended made a good case for why the act should not have been allowed.
“Those who believe that there was, in fact, a serious problem have had considerable opportunity to explain why: in the numerous media stories on the controversy, or in their various correspondences with me,” the statement reads. “But they have failed to do so. Saying that the demonstration ‘crossed the line,’ went too far,’ ‘was inappropriate,’ or ‘was troubling’ convey disapproval but do not illuminate reasoning.”
He adds that if he was grading the arguments against allowing a man to use a custom high-powered sex toy to bring his naked girlfriend to orgasm before 100 students, “most would earn an ‘F.’”
“Offense and anger are not arguments,” he wrote. “But I remain open to hearing and reading good arguments.”
I’m with Bailey on this one; all the students were adults, it wasn’t a requirement, and everyone who watched consented to watch. (As far as I can tell, none of the objections have come from Bailey’s students.) So where’s the problem?
The blogger I linked to disagrees. Responding to “offense and anger are not arguments,” he writes:
Yeah, that line is a good one. He needs a good argument to understand why having a live sex act, after class, at a major university, is wrong. Sometimes you should just know better.
No point in arguing with that, is there?
What’s the coherent and logical argument against what Bailey did? I mean, I can see the argument that it was a bad decision from a practical perspective, due to the reaction it got, but that’s not an argument based on principle.
For more context, read this post at blogher, by Avflox of Sex and the 405.
I can think of three coherent arguments:
1) I perceive the act as childish, as many other people will, and students at a university are supposed to be adults, or learning how to be adults.
It’s a human sexuality class. Very well; if the professor feels that this is part of the class, then by all means put it on the syllabus and teach whatever lesson it was that he had in mind.
But instead it’s an after-class, optional, putatively spur-of-the-moment demo. (I called it a practicum in the first draft of this post without thinking about it. Then I reconsidered.) The professor writes in his reads-as-insincere apology that he’s SHOCKED that the act has been in the news for two whole days. Sure, buddy. You had people engage in public sex in your classroom, and it’s absolutely incomprehensible that this raised any interest in the larger community.
That gives me an impression – and perhaps it’s wrong, perhaps I’m misjudging, but I doubt it – of a bunch of tittering pseudo-adolescents impressed with how daring and edgy and transgressive they are. Childish.
2) There are ethical restraints on human experimentation/human subjects used in the classroom or lab, and ethical procedures in place to protect the interests of those subjects as well as the ethical culture of the university itself.
I have no doubt that a properly planned, soberly-considered demonstration of a sex act could conform to those guidelines/restraints/procedures at at least some universities; I have an equal certitude that an ad-hoc “hey let’s stick a power tool in this woman’s vagina” demo fails those guidelines in a spectacular way.
3) The people who are reportedly upset are not the students, but the alumni. Northwestern is dependent on the alumni for funding. Angering alumni is inherently unwise.
There may be times and issues where alumni anger be damned, the pursuit of knowledge must be engaged and to hell with the consequences. But one must pick one’s battles. What valuable information or educational benefit was derived from this exercise that justifies the presumably-impending loss of thousands/tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands/millions of dollars in alumni support?
I suspect that the answer is “very little”, which would lead us to the conclusion that a cost-benefit analysis of the decision was not performed even informally by the professor.
I have to say, I’m deeply uncomfortable with Bailey after his book, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism*, and so I don’t give him a lot of credit in terms of handling sensitive and complex issues of sexuality.
I don’t believe that the act of a woman being sexually stimulated to orgasm is innately offensive, or that it absolutely never has a place in a classroom, and I would disagree with those who are offended simply by a public display of woman sexuality. But, and again this is where my personal reservations about Bailey himself as a credible and thoughtful academic come into play (as well as my own unfortunately personal experience with how ass-headed academics can be about sex, gender, and sexuality), I am concerned about the context (both locally and more broadly) in which such a demonstration could be carried out, its tenor, and how it was interpreted and discussed by its audience. I think that’s a different criticism all together, but not necessarily a invalid one.
*Ceder discusses both its transphobia and its racism here.
(Edited to correctly represent that the woman was stimulated by the presenter, not by herself, although I’m admittedly slightly squicked out by the idea of her being stimulated by a male academic presenter (not Bailey) rather than by herself – shades of objectification.)
This was front-page news in the Chicago papers and the lead story in all the local newscasts that day, and was still in the papers and news broadcasts for the next couple of days. For those of you unfamiliar with Northwestern, it is located in Evanston, Illinois, which is contiguous to the north end of Chicago on the Lake Michigan lakeshore. We got to meet the young woman involved. She seemed rather blase about the whole thing, but I guess if you are going to have your fiance masturbate you to climax with a dildo attached to a reciprocating saw motor in front of 100 people then an on-camera interview is no biggie.
When my wife heard about it she asked me “How much did he (meaning the professor) charge people to watch?” When I told her it was for free she said “That’s a pretty good deal, it would cost you good money otherwise.”
Robert, you left out one important group of people who were prominently featured in the stories – the parents. You know, those people who actually write the checks? A great many of them were quite vocal about how offended they were. Something the University administration should probably consider, as a) there’s a lot of competition among schools for a dwindling population of students, b) it costs a $hitload of money to go to Northwestern, and c) despite popular belief parents can and actually do say to their kids “No, you can’t go to that school.”
Northwestern is one of two top-ranked private schools in Chicago (the University of Chicago being the other) and up until this point had enjoyed an excellent reputation. This did not exactly enhance it. At all. It was interesting that when the very first reports of this came out the University President was quoted along the lines of “We strongly support the principles of academic freedom,” blah, blah, blah. Then when the $hitstorm of combined anger and ridicule from alumni, parents and the community at large hit Northwestern, the next day he was quoted along the lines of “Professor ‘x’ showed extremely poor judgement and has brought discredit to Northwestern and this is not the kind of school we are and the University will look into disciplinary measures and” blah blah blah again.
There were also interviews of the professor himself who acted quite bemused and surprised that anyone would pay attention to this, that it made the news cycle, that anyone got upset, etc., etc., which just goes to show that perhaps a class in human sexuality ought to be taught by someone who isn’t either a) a bald-faced liar or b) a self-absorbed academic who is completely disconnected from reality.
My reaction is that it smells like a sensationalist bid for attention, rather than a learning tool. I mean, yes, this is a human sexuality class, but what do the students gain from seeing this? You certainly can’t see any of the interesting physiological responses, and facial expression etc. could be demonstrated in 1/100th the time with a photograph. From a more sociological view, *talking to her* would have surely been more interesting.
I’m far from opposed to live demos, and I’ve done a fair few either on myself or using my pets, but in all cases, you have to ask “What will the students get out of this that they cannot get from lecture or normal lab? Is it worth the time/effort?”
IMHO, the students would have been better served dropping by the medical anatomy cadaver dissection to actually *see* the internal anatomical details, particularly of the female reproductive system.
I’m a Northwestern alumna. I never took Bailey’s class myself, but I cannot think of any of my undergraduate close friends who didn’t take the class. (I was too shy, and also was not explaining the presence of that course title on my transcripts to my parents, who wrote the tuition checks.)
I should point out that this is not the first time Bailey’s after-class demonstrations have gotten a bit out of control; admittedly that is *usually* described as the presenters’ choice rather than Bailey’s (past occurrences included a trans woman showing off the results of her recent surgery).
However, to add to Jadey’s comment, Bailey has had some ethical issues in the past (including being sued by the women about whom he wrote his book for using their stories without permission.) And I don’t know how it goes on campus these days, but when I was there (seven to eleven years ago), there was a pretty common knowledge that Bailey behaved inappropriately with young female students while they were in his class–I personally know of at least three who slept with him. This may be creating a case of the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The problem, as I see it, is that students were invited to a panel discussion about kinky sexuality – not a performance. What they consented to was a frank and in-depth talk about BDSM, what they got was a demonstration. I can say that, as a student (not at Northwestern), that I would have been comfortable going to an optional lecture, but I would not have gone to a demonstration. Students were given the option to leave, but that isn’t really “consent” – it’s acquiescence. Especially since this professor is not known as being a particularly decent human being or an honest academic, I’m even more (ahem) turned off by the whole thing.
I wish I could explain why this bothers me so much, but I think the comments in the article at ontd_feminism@LJ do a better job of explaining all of this than I can.
Because it’s unprofessional? It should be really obvious that it’s inappropriate and could put his job in peril. Even if you don’t agree with it you need to recognize that this would not be considered socially acceptable.
Further, I fail to see the learning benefits of this act. You can have an academic discussion of sex and porn and kink and even have an academic viewing of pornography. But what does seeing a woman orgasm (which I should hope they have all seen) do for the class? This smacks too much of self indulgence and not enough of learning.
Just FTR, when I described this to a BDSM practitioner over the weekend, she said “oh, a toy show” and seemed to think it was not particularly unusual to do. So for the performers, it might have been like “Hey, we’re here as circus performers for a discussion on circuses. Shall we demonstrate juggling?”
This is not to suggest that there is no problem here–I am worried about the consent of the audience; being seen to leave could mark you as sex-negative so I’m persuaded that they really should have planned in advance–just to suggest that it might not have been as wild a leap in context as it seems on paper.
I do not object to the content of the demonstration, nor do I object, by definition, to it being a part of a college course on human sexuality; I do object to the pedagogical carelessness, if not negligence in the way Bailey handled the whole situation. Even granting that a demonstration of female ejaculation–which, if I remember correctly, was the point–could have a solidly justified educational function (which I grant; but there are those who clearly would not, except for the sake of argument), to make a live sexual performance part of a class, even an optional part of a class, would seem to me to require a careful preparing of the students in terms of all the social, cultural and political issues that arise when sex is performed for public consumption, and that clearly did not happen here. Independently of this particular situation and this particular subject matter, it makes me wonder how thoughtful and effective a teacher this guy actually is, though because it is this particular content, and because allowing the demonstration was a spur of the moment decision, it’s also hard not to wonder what role the “titillation factor”–and that is a phrase that needs to be unpacked; I just don’t have the time do it now–played in his decision to do so.
“it makes me wonder how thoughtful and effective a teacher this guy actually is, though because it is this particular content, and because allowing the demonstration was a spur of the moment decision, it’s also hard not to wonder what role the “titillation factor”–and that is a phrase that needs to be unpacked; I just don’t have the time do it now–played in his decision to do so.”
this, yes, exactly. There is a significant issue with lack of foresight. You can decide to do something like this, seriously contemplate the consequences, and attempt to address the issues. But it’s very clear he didn’t. The fact that he’s surprised that people are upset about this? That’s beyond weird.
Also, at least some of the articles are saying “female orgasm”; I haven’t seen anything about ejaculation.
From Salon:
I find it a bit inconsistent to allow seminars on kink and fetish ( that probably include looking at some sexually explicit images) and to disallow a demo, assuming that the demo is conducted within university liability rules. If you’re going to look at sexually explicit material together in class (which would flip me right out), why is it worse to look at sexually explicit people?
I think there’s some contradictions in how the study of sexuality is framed–it’s discussed (in order to get permission for these seminars) as though it’s this very dry, abstract, serious thing that has nothing to do with the actual experience of sex, as though a group of people can sit in the classroom and look at explicit material together and have there be no lived sexual implications, just as if they’re quietly studying Sanskrit together. It seems like the study of sexual cultures would be a fairly intense experience, bringing a lot of personal stuff into the room and creating various kinds of interpersonal, sexual, romantic, social, class and racial tension.
It’s a contradiction in the purpose of the university, actually – can the university be a place for the cool “neutral” study of well-defined subjects handled with professionalism by “grown-up” students, or is it a place where the messy study of all kinds of things foregrounds emotion, inequality, and so on? Can classes be entirely managed, deprived of spontaneity and mistakes in order to create a uniform, “professional” experience?
A foolish spontaneous choice about a class event may upset some students, but that’s very different from protracted, intentional creation of a hostile environment by making sexist jokes, using racist examples, talking about sex when sex isn’t in the curriculum, etc. A mistake in class planning is an opportunity to talk through some serious stuff with the students and can be really educational (as I’ve seen in my own student experience).
I find it really difficult to argue against the performance unless I’m also going to argue against classes in sexuality itself.
I think it was foolish of the professor just because of the fuss it was certain to create. (Also, he doesn’t sound like a terribly responsible or appealing person.)
I don’t think “but what will the parents/alumni think?” is a valid ethical consideration – parents and alumni have disapproved of all kinds of things, from integration to women students to restrictions on animal testing to student privacy rules. It’s certainly a practical concern, and there would need to be a darn good reason to overlook it.
Oh, I want to clarify – I think a thing can be a foolish choice for a class–something that creates the wrong kind of discomfort, something that derails the class–without being something to be forbidden. (Although some foolish choices certainly should be forbidden.)
I’m also curious to hear from the students. Maybe the professor judged this group correctly and the demo was a productive thing for them.
ETA– I read the links about Bailey’s work and he’s just awful! I would never even take a class from him about bicycle maintenance, never mind sexuality.
Anonymous:
Yes. Which is why there needs to be preparation, including preparation for the differences between the inevitably (at least for some) more intimate experience of watching a live performance. And I think also there is a big difference between acknowledging that the study of sex–like the study of anything else, frankly, but for here and now just the study of sex–can touch people in very intense and intimate ways that involve the kinds of tensions you name and the possibility that what was going on in this case was a shallow kind of “titillation factor.”
And now I am going to stop commenting so I can get to work.
Which is why there needs to be preparation, including preparation for the differences between the inevitably (at least for some) more intimate experience of watching a live performance.
I don’t know – I feel that it is to a degree incumbent upon students at an optional seminar to get up and walk out if they’re uncomfortable. It’s not as though this was an optional seminar about something unrelated that turned into an unexpected sexual demonstration–there was already a fairly reasonable expectation that students were comfortable with very explicit material. Part of being a student is learning to manage your discomfort, whether that means leaving or pushing through it. And I think that part of teaching is being willing to make changes in your plans as things happen in class, which includes the risk of making mistakes.
I think that underneath many of the public discussions about this situation are a bunch of conflicting and unexamined ideas about comfort, discomfort and learning; whether pornography/sexual stuff should be studied in an academic setting; whether sexual material is too “fun” for academia, ie RonF’s wife’s comment about “it would cost you good money” above; who has what kinds of privilege around sexuality…oh, a whole mess of stuff. I don’t think that most of those have direct bearing on whether the professor, who sounds like twenty kinds of creep, should be forbidden to do this kind of thing.
I would emphatically not have enjoyed this kind of thing as a student (and wouldn’t enjoy it now.)
I find myself wondering about the racial, class and bodily make-up of the presenters at the seminar, too. It would be a serious problem for me if — which is what I’d expect – the presenters were all white middle class thin young conventionally good-looking people, because that just reinscribes the whole “sexuality is only suitable for people who already have a lot of social privileges!” narrative.
mmmm I would hate to think that my bit about professionalism and academic instruction would be translated to dry or neutral or sterile. But there is a difference between dealing with messiness and doing something without clearly delimited academic benefit. i think there is a lot missing from this conversation because we don’t know how this fits into the rest of the syllabus. Did they discuss the implications of why they’re watching a woman orgasm and not a man? etc.
I’m in anthropology. We talk about all kinds of things that outright anger the students. But before I talk about race or sex/gender or sexuality, or hell *evolution*, I have to look at what I’m saying and what the implications are. How are the students going to react? If you’re doing something controversial – and this is clearly controversial – then you need to plan. I’ve been in classes where students walk out, say horrible off the wall things and yes those are learning opportunities. If we’re talking about gender and a student wanted to discuss their experiences with transgender issues, that’s one thing. I would closely monitor the conversation, and be on guard, but would probably let the discussion happen. If we’re talking about sexuality and a student wanted to discuss their sexual experiences I would cut them off. While it is a potentially meaningful discussion, there are too many things that could go wrong, and it doesn’t have clear immediate academic benefit (eta: in this case).
There is a very real problem with this professor if he failed to realize this was controversial. I don’t personally consider evolution controversial, but I know many of my students (and their parents) do. I’m still going to teach it, it’s important for a wide variety of reasons, but I’m going to recognize the potential backlash and plan for it. Standard procedure is to say they have to know it, not believe it, and to explain why understanding evolution is important to studying anthropology. The academic justification is an important part.
My ethical guidelines in this matter come more or less the American Anthropology Association and IRB guidelines (which don’t really apply here). Verbal informed consent is considered pretty iffy – he really should have gotten a signed form from both the performers and the students, at the very least for CYA reasons. This–for the students–should explicitly stated that attendance had no effect on your grade (though I’m sure we’ve all taken classes that had “voluntary events”). If he had planned this out, he could have had the guidelines and benefits explicitly laid out, and at least some of the public backlash could have been avoided.
Also, I think that public perception can be considered an ethical issue–though granted, I’m not a philosopher. This is probably heavily influenced by the AAA code of ethics. How your research effects how people view the discipline is something you are supposed to consider. If you anger folks, you make it difficult for other researchers to do their thing – you may affect donations to the uni/dept, the future student enrollment, and goodness knows what else for your dept specifically. If you anger the students/alumni/parents, you anger the administration, and that has a lot of potential ramification for you AND your colleagues.
I realize that I’m coming off as against this demonstration. I’m not objectively against it. I’m against how it was executed. I’m bothered by the clear lack of planning or basic consideration (or, as other people have mentioned, a total willingness to lie in the most absurd way).
Alternatively, I do think that there is a huge difference between a live performance and a video. I’ve shown videos that included a short clip of an animal being butchered. Only two students walked out. If I had had people come in to demonstrate butchering techniques (which I could academically justify) I have a feeling that students would have had a different reaction.
There is a difference between our demonstrations of traditional cooking methods (student attendence is also voluntary) and the slides we show in class. The experience is different – that’s the point. They said that in some of their interviews – the videos were too clinical and they wanted to show the real thing. So yes, I think you could make the argument that it’s acceptable to show imagery but not show live actions.
Anonymous, I think you (like Amp, and like some of the people objecting to the uproar) are confusing whether any public display of actual sex in a human-sexuality class can be OK, and whether this one was. Based on what we know and what others have said here about Bailey, my own take is “of course” and “no” respectively
And I am a bit surprised that nobody has noticed that this daring display of sexual behavior was, surprise, sexually stimulating an attractive young woman.
I would disagree with her rather strongly. Demonstrating a toy in at a play party, or an adult BDSM gathering, is to me quite a bit different than “let’s have a sex show and call it Academic, because I’m that edgy”.
How is this not sexual harassment? Jesus. If this happened to me, I’d be suing the university so fast…how can they let this moron near young adults?
me @16: I would question what the point of the demonstration was. To see how a sex toy operates? To watch a hot girl having an orgasm? To illustrate something relevant to the class, one would hope, but what?
I am very leery of the knee-jerk “well of course we should support this because prudes are angry about it”.
Something I’d like to add is that – especially at a prestigious university – when your professor says something is optional, you don’t hear that. What you hear is “good students will attend, lazy students will skip it”. And whether it’s because you want to absorb as much information as possible, or because you want to impress your professor with how studious you are – both very important – there’s a really strong pressure to attend. It’s misleading to describe this as something students were completely free to attend or skip depending on their preferences.
What? They just happened to have an electrically-powered dildo on hand? Seriously? Come on. Maybe the professor didn’t have this in mind, but someone did.
Anonymous:
I do think it’s an ethical concern, at least from the viewpoint of considering what parents will think. The transaction here does not just involve the child and the school. Parents are part of the decision-making process of where their child goes to school. And, especially at a school like Northwestern, they are paying quite a bit of money. Schools spend a lot of time and money presenting talks, printed materials, videos, etc. giving representations of the particular kind of educational experience their child will get, and parents make the decision and pay the school based on those representations. To then present some other kind of educational experience is unethical.
you left out one important group of people who were prominently featured in the stories – the parents. You know, those people who actually write the checks?
I find this assertion really offensive.
There are a lot of ways to pay for college.
– Scholarships/grants – money that comes from the university or outside sources like Pell Grants and is given directly to students or applied directly to their costs.
– Loans – money that is borrowed either from a private or public lender. This borrowing can be done by the student or by parents.
– Paying tuition directly – money given directly to the school for student costs. This can be done by the student, by parents, or by some other third party (like another relative, an employer who offers tuition credits, etc.).
So this really creates six possible streams of money. Grants, loans to students, loans to parents, payments from students, payments from parents, payments from other parties.
Please note that parents are only two of those six streams. And while I’m in the middle of a backlog of grading and don’t have time to go research mining, the Project on Student Debt publishes a fact sheet showing that 67% of students graduating from 4-year colleges in 2008 had student loan debt including 72% of graduates from private nonprofit schools like Northwestern. Average student debt levels have been increasing precipitously – 24% in just 4 years from 2004 to 2008.
So over 2/3rds of students graduating from schools like Northwestern have taken out debt themselves to pay for school. Given that you’ll have some students on 100% scholarships, usually for academics or athletics; some students who are using a combination of grants, loans, and their own earnings to pay for school; etc. etc. – what percentage of students are actually going to school with their parents “writing the checks”? Given that many students who had hoped their parents would help pay for college are now having to finance it entirely on their own because one or both parents are unemployed, have beat-up credit due to home foreclosure, etc., I have to wonder. We can certainly say that the number being completely financed by their parents is less than 1/3, probably far less than 1/3 given the number of combinations that are possible above while excluding parental payments or loans.*
So even if we accept the premise that the person who writes the check gets to say what the education contains (which I do not: students are entitled by higher education privacy laws to choose their majors, select electives and general education classes, enroll in extra-curricular activities, etc. without their parents being informed, and yet *another* reason for tenure at the higher ed level is to prevent parents from attempting to influence what a given professor teaches), the assertion that “mom and dad are writing the checks” is so far out of the reality for your average college student today that it is almost laughable.
* And yet, students whose parents are unwilling or unable to pay part of their schooling or borrow to help finance it, still find their parents’ income(s) counted against them for the purpose of financial aid. Ask me how many friends I had in college in the early 90s who faced the possibility of having to drop out of school because they came out as gay, Mom or Dad stopped helping with tuition, and yet they couldn’t even get loans or work study to cover the gap because the financial aid rules said Mom/Dad’s income and assets still had to get figured into their award formula.
I want to second, third, and fourth what SeanH said. Even if he HAD warned that there might be practical demonstrations involved (which he did not), there are deeply troubling power issues at play here.
I started out thinking “What’s the big deal?”, but the more I read, the more I find this really disturbing.
A little Googling reveals this:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/08/20/pay
Poorer students’ parents pay about 40% of the bill. Middle-class students’ parents pay about 55%. Rich students’ parents pay about 67%.
Mom and Dad are writing a pretty hefty percentage of the checks.
RonF, I’m guessing the couple wanted to do a public “scene”. If what happened is as the Salon article describes, then Bailey should have put the brakes on it. An “optional” course that contains a surprise involvement in somebody else’s kink is not cool, and Bailey’s reaction strikes me as that kind of narcissistic “better to ask forgiveness than permission” that gives libertines everywhere a bad name.
Robert – interesting, thanks. Though I’m missing where you got that statement from.
That link suggests that parent payments and borrowing account for a little less than half of the cost for the “typical student.”
At private 4-year institutions (like Northwestern), parent payments and borrowing made up about $14,500 of the about $31,000 per year costs – also a little less than half.
Totaling the average parent income and parent borrowing categories for each group of students and dividing by the average total funding.
Few students at a place like Northwestern are self-supporting. I don’t know a precise number off-hand what tuition+fees+housing+meals costs at Northwestern, but it’s got to be around $50K. Even with loan programs parents who are not destitute are expected to come up with money by the people who are handing out grants and loans. I don’t care if the parent is only handing their kid $1 – if you give your kid money you get a say in how it’s spent.
As far as your citation of the law in the matter, remember that the distinction here was between an ethical reason for not doing this vs. a practical reason. The premise was that there was no ethical reason for not doing this over the objection of parents and alumni, not that there was a legal reason why it should be protected. It seems to me your premise is that a child and a school taking thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a year from the child’s parents owes them no obligation and that the child and the institution should be able to make decisions completely independently of them. I find that unethical.
And yes – a kid needs to stay on good terms with their parents. Life is like that. If you’re dependent on someone you better find a way to accommodate them, regardless of whether it’s your parents or your boss or your spouse or your child. Or find some other educational path or career to follow.
I’m not talking about or limiting my viewpoint to parents who are completely financing their children’s education. My daughter went to an out-of-state private university and my son went to an in-state public university. My income is not close to the $250K that the Obama administration calls “wealthy” when they talk about tax cuts. My wife and I in each case had to come up with about $18K/year. The various Federal and State supported loan programs refused to permit the kids to sign up for any more than a certain amount of money in loans. $18K/year was specifically our burden to bear, regardless of whether we paid for it by loans (we ended up refinancing our house for part of this) or out of our paychecks. I paid out $162K over 9 years. That gives me a say in their educational process.
I presume that means that the school is not required to notify the parents. I presume that it doesn’t prevent the parents from saying to their child “You send me your ID and password for your account that has your schedule on it or we don’t send you any more checks.”
What kind of parent does that? A parent who had a roommate that took a tuition check, dropped out of school and bought a motorcycle with the part of it that he didn’t use to pay his rent, buy food, etc.
Student loan levels – when I graduated from college I had a debt level that equaled about 25% of my annual income from my first professional job. It took me about 6 years to pay it off, and I was married (I got married between my junior and senior years in undergraduate school).
Now I understand that kids are graduating with higher burdens than that. There was a story in the NYT about how high student debt loads are and how kids can’t get out from under them by declaring bankruptcy, etc. because of the evil bankruptcy laws passed under teh eeeevil Booosh administration, yadda yadda yadda. The individual they built the story around was a young woman who had amassed $100K in debt but could only find a job paying about $20 – $25K a year. It wasn’t until 9 or 10 paragraphs into the story that we found out that she’d gotten a degree in “Religion and Womens’ Studies”. The story was apparently to raise sympathy for the young woman and the people in her situation. My reaction was that before you to borrow money you had better figure out a realistic plan for paying that money off; and exactly what kind of job did she think she was going to get with that degree that would enable her to pay off $100K in loans? I am also curious as to why someone would loan her the money. They were foolish to do so, and the fact that if she fails to pay it off I’ll probably end up on the hook to do so via some kind of bailout (either of her or of the lender) angers me. But the fact that the bank failed to exercise due diligence doesn’t excuse her from not having done so.
RonF, as I pointed out the last time you ranted about that unsourced story, the young woman was probably complaining about not being able to get a job after law school because of the bad legal market. That has nothing to do with a Women’s Studies degree. (If I recall correctly, last time you were also trying to peddle the horseshit that they didn’t have WS degrees twenty years ago.)
RonF:
Yes it does; the question is what kind of say. You can decide that your child ought not to go to a school of which you disapprove, in the same way that you can take your business elsewhere in any other situation rather than spend your money where you don’t want to. That money does not give you the right to do things such as determine curriculum, etc.
In this particular case, where I think there are clear problems with what this professor did, especially (for the sake of the point I want to make here) the fact that students might have felt tacitly pressured to attend the optional demonstration, I don’t have a problem with parents stepping forward if their children expressed the kinds of concerns that have been expressed here (18-22 year olds may be young adults, but there are still situations where it’s not entirely inappropriate for their parents to be involved when those kids need someone to speak for them); nor do I have a problem with parents asking the kinds of questions that have been asked here, questions that are focused on the educational integrity of what happened, not the moral appropriateness of live sex demonstrations. It’s when parents decide that the fact that they pay for whatever percentage of their kids’ education gives them the right to impose their moral position on the school–rather than taking their money elsewhere–that I begin to have a problem.
RJN – couldn’t say it better myself.
One of my biggest issues is this tidbit from the Suntimes.com article about the guy who gave the lecture:
Melvoin-Berg said he met Prof. Bailey through a swinging couple who previously spoke to the class. Melvoin-Berg runs the “Weird Chicago Red Light District Sex Tour,” which has participants playing games like “spot the ho” as they travel the city looking for prostitutes.
“I never thought I’d be writing a letter like this, but then one day in my Human Sexuality Class at Northwestern University, the professor asked us to stay after for a ‘special session’…”
To clarify, the formatting of my post got all messed up. The first line was me, the next few was the suntimes.com quote, and the portion in the block quote was my commentary again.
@Robert: right?! sounds like a dear penthouse entry!
Sure.
Shoot, it’s a low risk to loan her money; if she has to declare bankruptcy, she’ll still have to pay you back because of the changes in the bankruptcy laws…
One of the effects of decreasing the risks to the lenders is that the lenders will take greater risks. From an actuarial standpoint, they just follow the optimal point in the curve.
Grace
Here’s your source, mythago. You’ll note that it has nothing to do with law school. It has to do with a woman who borrowed nearly $100,000 (which you find out about in the 2nd paragraph) to get an “interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies” (which you find out about in approximately the 33rd paragraph, not the 9th or 10th one as I had thought).
Now, the banks were certainly unwise to loan her the money – I have no doubt of that. I assure you that I don’t favor the changes in the bankruptcy laws that seem to encourage banks to make loans that there’s no decent prospect of being paid back. They should have to suffer for poor business decisions.
But they didn’t force the money on her, she sought the loans out and even turned to a second lender when the first one cut her off. She has to bear the primary responsibility here for taking out a loan without properly evaluating how she was going to pay it back.
Grace:
It’s one thing to loan someone with assets and a job money. If the bankruptcy laws allow, you can go after their assets for the money and expect that their income will cover loan payments. But this woman has no assets and has poor prospects for getting any. Regardless of bankruptcy law, the banks can’t collect money from someone if they don’t have any and don’t have a job that pays enough. They could end up collecting a monthly check from this woman for the rest of her life and not get the loan paid back.
RJN, if the parents pay money to the school they have the right to ask questions and demand changes on any basis they want. The school can choose to answer or ignore those questions. They can choose to make changes or not. But the parents certainly have the right to complain if their moral sense is offended, especially if activities as morally questionable as this takes place on their campus and they don’t publicize it in their admissions materials. The actions of a school in educating children are not free of moral content and are challengable on a moral basis.
Meanwhile, here is a female professor fired for dancing in a burlesque act off-campus while never publicizing either her real identity or her association with her school. She was never nude and apparently there was legitimate political and social commentary in her act.
I disagree with the school’s decision to fire her. It seems to me that it was none of their business.
RonF @37: So, instead of a young lady whining that she couldn’t get rich with a B.A., we have a young lady who got grants and work-study as well as loans, got turned away for some of the subsidized loans due to her mother’s loan history (and thus inability to be a reliable co-signer), and got an eyebrow-raising private loan from a bank to make up the difference – and who is working diligently and paying off her loans now. That’s not quite the “dumbass women’s studies major expects a living on a platter” argument you’ve brought up twice now.
Re @39, I don’t think it would be any of the school’s business if she were doing it for the money, instead of Art. (Assuming that’s what was really going on. In my experience, burlesque for Art is like Playboy for the articles.)
What a shame that you’ve experienced such disappointing burlesque.