 "Photo: JESS KEMP, THE VOLANTE, 2010")
When the president of the Secular Student Alliance at USD was making posters to promote the group’s next event, law student Jacob Henry didn’t have any idea about the controversy he was about to start.
To entice students to come to Porn Night, a two-hour educational event about the history of sex and pornography tonight in Farber Hall at 7 p.m., Henry and other group members hung posters around campus the afternoon of April 16.
The poster wasn’t the end of promoting the event for SSA, as they were immediately required to take it down. But after putting up a revised poster that the university again disapproved of, the dean of students’ office mandated SSA submit, to that authority, any new posters or fliers to promote the event.
The original posters featured a nude woman leaning back on her hands with her legs crossed while she sits on the floor. Her face, chest and pelvic area were covered with text stating the event time and location with the phrase, “Religion made it wrong. We’ll make it oh so right.”
Three hours after posting this, he got a phone call from the administration informing him that the posters needed to be taken down.
Dean of Students James Parker said in an e-mail that he was notified of several complaints from students, faculty and staff and that they thought the poster with the woman “created an uncomfortable environment for our community.”
He said there were also concerns that the poster created a hostile work environment for university employees, something Henry said he understands.
“When we were designing the poster, we were really only thinking about the students and getting their attention,” he said. “But there are faculty and it is their work place.”
Still wanting to promote their event, SSA put up a second poster that featured an elderly man holding a large rabbit, to portray the “connotation between rabbits and sex,” Henry said.
The university again objected because on the picture was the text “porn.”
Henry said the removal of the second flier was a violation of free speech.
“Looking at free speech case law, you don’t have free speech to just show pornography wherever you want. That is a limited form of speech,” he said. “However, the word ‘porn’ is not an offensive word.”
Henry said Kirsten Compary, associate dean of students, told him that the word “porn” didn’t represent the event well because the event isn’t just about pornography, and that SSA wasn’t guaranteed the right to use the word “porn” on the flier at all.
Parker denied forcing the group to take down the second poster, saying his office merely advised SSA that they could represent their event in a more effective way without the use of the word “porn.”
However Henry said the university went as far as requiring that “(SSA) needed to get (the posters) cleared through Parker before we could hang anything else up for the event.”
Many students say they agree with the university’s decision to remove the first poster with the nude woman. However, if the university did in fact force the group to pull the second poster, some said a line was crossed.
Senior Amber Wilson, who saw the second poster, said the university overstepped its limits with the second poster because the poster wasn’t vulgar or profane.
“It doesn’t offend me at all, the flier or the word ‘porn.’ I don’t see anything wrong with (the second poster),” she said.
Graduate student Caitlin Dill agreed the poster of the man holding the rabbit and the word “porn” should not have been taken down unless SSA chose to voluntarily.
“I don’t think (the university) should be able to (censor) words … the word ‘porn’ is not offensive,” she said.
Some buildings on campus, such as the Beacom School of Business and I.D. Weeks Library, do require prior approval before posters and fliers can be put up, however, other building do not have any pre-approval requirements.
Parker said he was unsure of the exact policy governing signage in campus buildings.
Reach reporter Joe Sneve at Joe.Sneve@usd.edu.
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