The College Fix

Harvard University’s annual Sex Week festivities this week made national headlines, including a write up on National Review Online by Alec Torres, who noted the programing offered “18 titillating and ostensibly educational lectures and workshops.”

“One gem of the week was a Monday-night event entitled ‘Feel the Good Vibrations,’ a workshop to teach interested students about sex toys and how they work,” Torres reports. “At ‘How to Lose Your Virginity,’ students were able to explore ‘why our sex-crazed society cherishes this so-called precious gift’ while learning about ‘the myths and misogyny surrounding a rite of passage that many obssesses [sic] about but few truly understand.’ The event offered free beverages and a ‘reusable V-Card.’ ”

“Likewise ‘#FutureSex: How technology will change your sex life,’ the final event of the busy week, will discuss how ‘sex and technology are co-evolving’ when ‘romance is just a click, poke, or swipe away.’ ”

And while people across the country raised eyebrows at some of the silliness and vulgarity taking place at one of the nation’s most preeminent institutions of higher education, some Harvard students simultaneously took part in a far more important, more dignified version of Sex Week, albeit a far less noticed one.

Harvard’s White Ribbon Against Pornography Week ran this week, and featured panels such as: The Homewrecker: Pornography, Relationships, and the Family; Hookup Culture: Slavery or Freedom?; Pornography in Society: How Did We Get Here?; Collateral Damage: How Pornography Affects Women; and True Manhood In An Age of Empty Indulgence.

The weeklong series of talks, which included notable speakers such as Dr. Peter Kreeft, was co-sponsored by Harvard Daughters of Isabella and Knights of Columbus; Harvard College Faith and Action; Harvard College Anscombe Society; and the Harvard Catholic Student Association.

Attempts by The College Fix to reach Harvard College Anscombe Society members this week were unsuccessful. Regardless, the weeklong series of anti-porn seminars are a positive sign of hope in the wake of a never-ending onslaught of smut coming from college campuses, in which graphic and gratuitous sexual seminars and events of all sorts are much the norm. One need only search The Fix for terms such as sex, porn, naked or orgasm if one wants the salacious details.

But take heart – more good news from the Ivy League this week comes by way of Yale University, which debuted an inaugural pro-life conference. Or by way of Princeton University, which hosted a speaker who defended the definition of marriage as a union between man and woman.

The campus counterculture today is alive and in full swing, and it’s the conservative students who are leading the charge.

Jennifer Kabbany is associate editor of The College Fix.

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