The College Fix

OPINION: Students make a valiant effort to oppose pornography

University of Notre Dame students are continuing to call on the administration to limit access to porn websites on the university’s Wi-Fi system.

Students for Child-Oriented Policy’s petition “call[s] for Notre Dame President Fr. Robert Dowd, C.S.C., to take immediate action to promote a pornography-free campus,” according to the Irish Rover.

The conservative newspaper notes the student senate voted down a resolution in 2023 and then-President John Jenkins rejected a similar proposal in 2019. Jenkins supported allowing students to opt-in to a WiFi filter.

SCOP co-president Theo Austin told the Irish Rover he hopes the new president, Robert Dowd, will support the filter. Dowd, like Jenkins, is a Catholic priest.

“My hope and prayer is that there will be no need for further labor in this end, that President Dowd will push this change through the admin and porn will be removed from access on University internet,” Austin said.

The activism from Notre Dame students has paid off in some ways, as Catholic University of America activists succeeded in getting a filter added after hearing about the 2019 effort. Coincidentally, President John Garvey, who implemented the filter at CUA, is now a law professor at Notre Dame.

“[The CUA ban] seemed to be fairly uncontroversial among the students, and I was delighted to do what they asked. I’d had it in mind myself, but their request made it all that much easier,” Garvey told the Rover.

There are of course ways students can get around the filter. However, every minor obstacle can still slow someone down to engaging in destructive behavior.

There are other efforts on campus to help Notre Dame students struggling with pornography addiction, thanks to Josh Haskell. While in college, he started a group to help men with their addictions, as The College Fix previously reported.

“Porn is a unique beast to fight. With other addictions, you can at least trash the drug,” Haskell previously wrote in the student newspaper. “With porn, it’s much harder to separate yourself from the temptation. Your drug remains in your pocket all day, begging you to lean into just one moment of weakness.”

He has since started an organization called Ethos National to help expand the group nationally to help more students.

These efforts are important because porn is not only degrading to men and women but is linked to mental health problems including depression. This is a fight worth fighting.

MORE: ‘We’ve had enough’: Female Notre Dame students rip porn in campus theatre

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: The University of Notre Dame is shown; Rebecca D. Lev/Shutterstock

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter