In this excellent letter to the editor of the Duke Chronicle, associate divinity professor Susan Keefe says something I wish more people on university campuses ? especially administrators ? would say:
quote
—————–
[The assumption is that] female students have no self-will to abstain from sex while they pursue their academic career, and that their thoughts in the classroom are torn between sex and their studies. …
What image of our students does [this] give to prospective applicants? One could hardly blame them for wondering if they would be expected to engage in sex on a regular basis.
So much for our campus as a place where they might be taken seriously in the classroom for their intelligence, concentration, and true love of learning.
—————–
Now her specific target is a Depo-Provera ad in the Chronicle. But it could just as easily be the overarching message regarding sex one finds on campus and in the popular culture ? which speaks not only of sex without consequences, but also of the negative implications one faces for choosing abstinence or desiring heterosexual monogamy.
