<p>As a parent of a Yale sophomore, I want to ask if any other parents are a little outraged at sex week. This has been bothering me and came up as a topic of conversation during the recent break. Now that our daughter has returned to campus, I can't stop thinking about it.</p>
<p>We're a liberal family transplanted to the east coast from the Midwest. We are not prudes and we are not religious. Nevertheless, both we and our daughter have been dismayed by the adolescent obsession with sexual topics at Yale and the apparent acceptance of this by the administration. The topics discussed in public forums during the recent sex week events don't seem appropriate for an academic setting and are not what we expected from Yale. Just try finding any mention of it in the university's promotional material. </p>
<p>I wouldn't be posting here except that there was a very public, sexually obscene and childish display in our daughter's residential college recently.</p>
<p>We still believe in Yale and are proud of our daughter being there but even she was in her words "creeped out" by this recent event she feels was inspired by sex week. Does anyone else feel this sex week thing reflects poorly on Yale and its administration and should be stopped? Should we just accept this and shut our mouths? This doesn't seem to be an effort to have a mature academic discussion of human sexuality. With detailed instruction on the use of sex toys, sadomasochism and weird fetishes, It seems like just cheap porn. </p>
<p>The following story, forwarded to us by a friend who we were talking with about this, summarizes some of the things that give us concern. I'd like to know other parents thoughts.</p>
<p>As I posted on the Yale Parents’ thread, I was uncomfortable with Sex Week and I’m dismayed if the coverage offended potential employers. But the linked column is just silly. I did a quick and dirty search of the author, Katherine Kersten. She’s a member of a conservative think tank and a strong supporter of right wing Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. In her column, she frequently blasts American universities for their “liberal bias.” For somebody who purports to have been so outraged by Sex Week, she sure included a boatload of vivid detail in that piece. Talk about appealing to prurient interests.</p>
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<p>Sorry, but I don’t think college kids need Sex Week to inspire them to engage in sexually stupid behavior.</p>
<p>I have a feeling that many parents and Yale students would not miss Sex Week if it went away. As a college professor and administrator and resident dorm director for many years, I find myself perplexed at the institutionalization of this week long event. It seems to me peculiarly privileged. There are so many other issues or topics worthy of serious and prolonged discussion and investigation that Yale could be devoting its resources to bringing to campus wide attention. I also dislike the sense of a captive audience as the market for the types of items being sold and I think they’ve crossed a line. Since S started attending Yale, my feelings are more viscerally negative, although S was not at all interested in having anything to do with any of it. He also told me that it was his impression that about half of the students he knows were unenthusiastic or disaffected to one degree or another. He described a situation in one of his classes while waiting for the professor to arrive where some of the students were talking about the Sex Week events they had been to while other students in the class clearly did not want to hear the conversation and clearly would rather have been talking about something else.<br>
I don’t think you have to be conservative, religious or a prude to question Sex Week.</p>
<p>Sex week at Yale is harmless. Just an another, although admirable, example of liberal arts education making students “uncomfortable” in their own skins and forcing them to examine their beliefs and opinions. Most will have to deal with this stuff sooner or later and sooner is better. If you want something truly creepy, how about Jerzey Kosinski (Painted Bird) who taught a residential college seminar in the early 70’s and challenged/encouraged his students to witness a “real” suicide in NYC. That was the talk of the campus for days/weeks. No comparision IMHO, but similar.</p>
<p>^ I think you can find whatever culture you want to find at Yale; from what I’ve heard, there’s a niche for everyone. If wild sex and alcohol, etc. is your thing, you’ll certainly be able to find peers who want to do that with you. On the other hand, if you’re more for the studying and stuff, just stay out of the way of the party scenes and you won’t be exposed to anything you don’t want to see.</p>
<p>my perspective: if you arent interested, then dont go to any of the seminars. it bothers me that people think that being “uncomfortable” is too big a price to pay for their peers/ sons and daughters peers to be well-informed. you dont know what your son or daughter will encounter in the future, and its so so important to have the right information (to keep yourself SAFE when experimenting) regarding sex toys, certain practices, etc. at least, this is my impression of the intention behind SWAY</p>
<p>When we (parents) grew up, its seems there was a discernible line between having and understanding and respecting the act of sex on the one hand, and having an awareness of degrading porn on the other hand. </p>
<p>Our kids grew up in an era when the porn industry went mainstream, so I don’t think they see any difference between the two, or at least it is not as obvious to them. I don’t know whether this is good or bad, but it is probably why it feels bad to us parents.</p>
<p>I just read the Parents Thread and looked into it a bit more…</p>
<p>While I understand that many, if not all parents would be “bothered” by something like this, there no reason to actually be CONCERNED. I think people need to remember that the events mentioned including talks about sex toys and how to perform oral sex are not academic - kids aren’t being taught this stuff as part of the $200,000 tuition. It’s just students having fun in an intentionally tongue-in-cheek manner.</p>
<p>There was also concern displayed that employers would look upon it unfavourably, and to that I wonder what kind of person would write about Sex Week on their resume? One would have to be severely lacking in academic value and personable skills if it came down to explaining the suitability of their oral sex performance in a job application! Prospective employers know what Yale is about, and ultimately that is a superb intellectual environment. A student run Sex Week is not going to change that.</p>
<p>To the student who wrote that we parents are overly concerned about this I want to assure you that our daughter can make her own decisions and we support that. She avoided these events entirely but she does feel that it has effected the atmosphere and that the public display that she found so distasteful was inspired by the kind of casual and even disrespectful attitude toward sex that has been encouraged by sex week. We also think that it reflects poorly on Yale in the media. Maybe when it was started it was meant to be an intellectual event but not anymore. Isn’t there anyone on campus who thinks this has gone too far and wants to speak out? Where is the line here? Wjb, your kid may not have been witness to the same thing my kid was. I’m more in agreement with stringmom.</p>
<p>Well… let me assure everyone here that if anyone is set on avoiding “sex week” as a student at Yale, it’s not a problem at all. During sex week, I was caught up in a pile of essays, tests, and other college misfortunes. Before I knew it, it was already over and forgotten about. Unlike high school “mandated” sex education, sex week is something that is completely optional for the students benefit. Like anything optional, the events in sex week draw a disproportional amount of interest from a small percentage of the student body. I doubt most kids here really care about it at all.</p>
<p>I’m finally past my deadline and I’m surprised to revisit this site and see that there really don’t seem to be many people who feel the way I do about this. Gryffon5147, my daughter assures me that this is a very big deal and that it gets talked about by the students a lot. That’s what led to the thinkgs that she found so disturbing in her residential college. I don’t want to give the really shocking details here but it seemed to have been inspired by the same kind of students who thought this was exciting stuff. My daughter sent me this link.<br>
[Thats</a> Why I Chose Undead Sex? > horror, movies, that’s why i chose yale, Yale, zombies | IvyGate](<a href=“http://www.ivygateblog.com/2010/03/thats-why-i-chose-undead-sex/]Thats”>http://www.ivygateblog.com/2010/03/thats-why-i-chose-undead-sex/)
If no one else feels that this is just crazy for a place like Yale and that it isn’t creating a bad climate then I guess I really am just on my own.</p>
<p>C’mon, doubtingparent. Do you actually believe that Sex Week – which I think is a pretty dumb event – inspires students to engage in “shocking” and “disturbing” public sexual displays. That just doesn’t pass the reasonableness test. </p>
<p>Among my son and his friends, Sex Week didn’t even create a ripple of interest, let alone constitute “a very big deal.”. I think you grossly overestimate the impressionability of college students.</p>