We regret to report that Father Jenkins has denied the student-initiated petition for a filter to curb the torrent of pornography it funnels to students via its Internet service.
We reported on the genesis of this student movement in earlier bulletins: Notre Dame, Pornography Middleman and Cover Columbus! Show Porn!.
Now, with the permission of The Observer, we reproduce below an op-ed by the leaders of this campaign that describes what has happened since then.
(The co-authors, Jim Martinson (’19) and Ellie Gardey (’21), are the immediate past president and the new co-president of the student organization SCOP. Mr. Martinson, a recipient this year of Sycamore Trust’s student award for outstanding contributions to Notre Dame’s Catholic identity, will speak at our June 1 breakfast during Reunion Weekend. Ms. Gardey was the foremost investigative reporter for the Irish Rover this past year.)
We preface this op-ed with several observations:
- Along with pornography, the university supplies contraceptives to students through its health insurance program and permits the student organization Irish 4 Reproductive Health to deliver free contraceptives to student dorms on request. Especially when mixed with alcohol, this is a combustible combination.
- This collaboration by the university in providing instrumentalities of vice is especially bewildering in light of: (a) the link between pornography and sexual abuse stressed by the students and others, and (b) the deeply troubling incidence of sexual abuse at the university.
As we’ve noted, the university’s most recent survey, with only about half the students responding, brought reports of about 9 rapes and about 50 other sexual assaults a month during the preceding year.
- The university’s explanations for denying the petition are either flip, risible, useless, or fatuous.
Flip: Vice President Paul Browne’s dismissive “God’s given us the choice of whether we’re going to be sinners or not, you know.”
Risible: Paul Browne redux : “We expect our students and others not to patronize pornographic sites.”
Useless, Father Jenkins’s only explanation: “We do not believe a mandatory filter is the best solution for us.”
Fatuous: Father Jenkins: “[W]e are taking steps to encourage students to adopt filters voluntarily.”
- The anti-porn campaign by Notre Dame students has inspired students on other campuses to follow suit, and they have enjoyed their first success at Catholic University. CUA’s president Dr. John H. Garvey (ND ’70 and former ND law school professor) said he was “happy” to grant the student government request to block porn sites and declared:
[quote]I am so proud of our students![/quote]
- Finally, since Father Jenkins has declined to explain his decision, it seems reasonable to conclude he does not think it would command widespread applause. It likely has to do, we suppose, with the desire to “fit in” with secular academe and not appear “too Catholic.”
This commentator has it right:
[quote]If universities are serious about protecting women and reducing sexual assault, they should oppose porn as a health and safety issue, and they should block porn on their wifi networks….[But] if they’re more concerned with people-pleasing and making money from a higher quantity of students, they’ll continue with the same old song and dance. [/quote]
The students open their letter, as we did our bulletin, by marking the surpassing irony of covering Columbus while displaying obscene images and actions.
University President rejected our request for a porn filter
Letter to the Editor | Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Fr. John Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president, recently decided to cover murals of Christopher Columbus because they were deemed too offensive to be viewed by Notre Dame students. One week later, he rejected a student petition calling for a pornography filter on Notre Dame’s Wi-Fi. We are dumbfounded. Does the University of Notre Dame really believe Christopher Columbus is more harmful than porn?
Notre Dame has taught us to make a difference in our community, and we saw a chance to do just that through the filter initiative. Pornography consumption is an enormous problem at Notre Dame and for all people our age. It harms users — both men and women — and their ability to form healthy relationships, and it harms women by fostering a culture of exploitation, sexual violence and toxic masculinity. This is especially relevant in the age of the #MeToo movement. Everyone knows that many people are consuming pornography. What most people don’t acknowledge is that many of them want to stop.
We know that Notre Dame already has a policy that states that students are not supposed to use University Wi-Fi to access pornography. But unlike Holy Cross College (ND’s brother college across the street, which filters its Wi-Fi network), ND does nothing to enforce its own policy. As a University that claims to educate “hearts and minds,” Notre Dame should not play a part in providing pornographic material. A part of that education, no doubt, is the formation of moral character.
To encourage the University to enforce its own policies, we penned a letter in the school newspaper, co-signed by 81 fellow male students, requesting a porn filter. We wrote, “As a university that champions social justice, human rights, equality and dignity, Notre Dame ought to block pornography using the technology available to us. Doing so represents both an attempt to eradicate pornography from the campus culture and, more broadly, a strong stance against sexual assault, sex trafficking and other human rights violations.”
This was followed by a letter signed by 68 Notre Dame women who stated that “pornography propagates a mindset that people, especially women, are mere sex objects.”
The letters went viral. Our petition garnered over 2,400 signatures from students, faculty, staff and friends of Notre Dame. A third-party petition also received over 12,500 signatures.
Nightline ABC, The Daily Beast, National Review and several other news organizations saw how important this issue was and turned what we were doing at Notre Dame into a national conversation. Our emails were flooded with notes from students from all over the U.S. who not only supported us but wanted to do the same at their universities.
Then we met with President Fr. Jenkins. We presented our argument for a pornography filter and how it would help Notre Dame students, our policy proposal and the technological steps for implementation. After this meeting and two follow-up conversations, it has become clear that the administration is not interested in promoting real change at Notre Dame. Instead, they offered to implement a vanilla “opt-in” system. In this model, students would have to sign up to have their internet filtered. The administrators said that this would be accompanied by a “public awareness campaign.”
An “opt-in” filter would send the message that degrading others, especially women, is merely a matter of individual choice. It makes what should be the expectation and standard of conduct — protecting and respecting human dignity — an option. And worse, it makes the default option one that feeds an industry that abuses women and children and cultivates an environment amenable to sexual assault.
We have come to realize that this is a generational disconnect: The types of filmed violence on screen are not “your father’s pornography.” Fr. Jenkins and his top officials do not get it. They do not seem to understand or care that lives (and souls) are at stake. They seem to think that the problems presented by pornography take place on the individual level, as a battle against temptation, but in actuality, it is a community-wide issue, one so serious that it demands moral leadership on the part of the University to promote student health and well-being.
We are disheartened to see that Notre Dame has rejected the call of thousands of members of the Notre Dame family to adopt a campus pornography filter. We hope Fr. Jenkins will reconsider his decision and promote a campus culture that upholds human dignity and respect for women.
Pornography at Notre Dame should be treated with at least the same concern as the covering up of the Columbus murals in the Main Building. We remain ready to support any move to meet this serious issue with a serious response.
Fr. John Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president, recently decided to cover murals of Christopher Columbus because they were deemed too offensive to be viewed by Notre Dame students. One week later, he rejected a student petition calling for a pornography filter on Notre Dame’s Wi-Fi. We are dumbfounded. Does the University of Notre Dame really believe Christopher Columbus is more harmful than porn?
Notre Dame has taught us to make a difference in our community, and we saw a chance to do just that through the filter initiative. Pornography consumption is an enormous problem at Notre Dame and for all people our age. It harms users — both men and women — and their ability to form healthy relationships, and it harms women by fostering a culture of exploitation, sexual violence and toxic masculinity. This is especially relevant in the age of the #MeToo movement. Everyone knows that many people are consuming pornography. What most people don’t acknowledge is that many of them want to stop.
To encourage the University to enforce its own policies, we penned a letter in the school newspaper, co-signed by 81 fellow male students, requesting a porn filter.
We wrote, “As a university that champions social justice, human rights, equality and dignity, Notre Dame ought to block pornography using the technology available to us. Doing so represents both an attempt to eradicate pornography from the campus culture and, more broadly, a strong stance against sexual assault, sex trafficking and other human rights violations.”
This was followed by a letter signed by 68 Notre Dame women who stated that “pornography propagates a mindset that people, especially women, are mere sex objects.”
The letters went viral. Our petition garnered over 2,400 signatures from students, faculty, staff and friends of Notre Dame. A third-party petition also received over 12,500 signatures.
Nightline ABC, The Daily Beast, National Review and several other news organizations saw how important this issue was and turned what we were doing at Notre Dame into a national conversation. Our emails were flooded with notes from students from all over the U.S. who not only supported us but wanted to do the same at their universities.
Then we met with President Fr. Jenkins. We presented our argument for a pornography filter and how it would help Notre Dame students, our policy proposal and the technological steps for implementation. After this meeting and two follow-up conversations, it has become clear that the administration is not interested in promoting real change at Notre Dame. Instead, they offered to implement a vanilla “opt-in” system. In this model, students would have to sign up to have their internet filtered. The administrators said that this would be accompanied by a “public awareness campaign.”
An “opt-in” filter would send the message that degrading others, especially women, is merely a matter of individual choice. It makes what should be the expectation and standard of conduct — protecting and respecting human dignity — an option. And worse, it makes the default option one that feeds an industry that abuses women and children and cultivates an environment amenable to sexual assault.
We have come to realize that this is a generational disconnect: The types of filmed violence on screen are not “your father’s pornography.” Fr. Jenkins and his top officials do not get it. They do not seem to understand or care that lives (and souls) are at stake. They seem to think that the problems presented by pornography take place on the individual level, as a battle against temptation, but in actuality, it is a community-wide issue, one so serious that it demands moral leadership on the part of the University to promote student health and well-being.
We are disheartened to see that Notre Dame has rejected the call of thousands of members of the Notre Dame family to adopt a campus pornography filter. We hope Fr. Jenkins will reconsider his decision and promote a campus culture that upholds human dignity and respect for women.
Pornography at Notre Dame should be treated with at least the same concern as the covering up of the Columbus murals in the Main Building. We remain ready to support any move to meet this serious issue with a serious response.
Jim Martinson
senior
Ellie Gardey
sophomore
Annual Breakfast @ Reunion 2019
We are pleased to announce that Fathe Miscamble will be the principal speaker our Annual Breakfast on Saturday morning, June 1. He will discuss Father Hesburgh’s “Ambitious Life” and “Conflicted Legacy,” in the words his book’s subtitle, and he will be joined by the two recipients of our 2019 student awards for outstanding contributions to the Catholic identity of the University, Mackenzie Kraker and Jim Martinson, both 2019 graduates, who will speak of their experiences as Notre Dame students.
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