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The University of Maryland, College Park says it “must allow” the campus Student Power Party to stage a free speech forum tonight, even though that forum will include a viewing of excerpts from Pirates II, the film that the university refused to allow students to screen on campus last week.
Meanwhile, the state legislator who over the weekend threatened to eliminate UMD’s funding if the film was shown is now saying he may seek to cut the university’s capital budget.
Here’s the Facebook page for tonight’s screening, which was scheduled to start at 7 pm, and Gawker’s take on the whole thing.
Tuesday update: The forum and screening went off without a hitch, and the state senator who was threatening to cut UMD’s funds backed down — sort of. He now says that he won’t seek to cut funding over last night’s event, but will press universities to implement policies that say “you can’t have university-sponsored XXX entertainment on campus” going forward.
About two hundred students showed up last night, watching the first half hour of the movie after a discussion of campus speech issues. When asked why they hadn’t shown the whole thing Student Power Party spokesperson Malcolm Harris said “you’d be hard-pressed to find a lot of students who want to sit around for a two-and-a-half-hour viewing of pornography on a Monday night.”
Student government elections are taking place today and tomorrow at UMD, with the Student Power Party running as one of four slates.
The University of Maryland Diamondback has a strong editorial up this morning on the college’s porn film controversy. Excerpts:
This isn’t just about state legislators and free speech. University administrators’ decision-making process last week demonstrates how little regard they have for student input. […] Administrators might persuasively argue they won’t support hate-speech events that discriminate against a religious group or an ethnic group. In the same vein, they might have argued the canceled event would have degraded women.
But such a decision must be made in a public forum, with as wide a segment of stakeholders as can possibly be assembled. Deeming material inappropriate behind closed doors is the fast road toward truly unjust distributions of resources, and frankly, to discrimination. […]
It’s easy to devalue the precedent administrators have set in the context of a bunch of hormonal college students in a tizzy to see some skin. But what happens when federal funding for stem-cell research comes up? What happens when administrators decide whether a speaker on Israel or Palestine is engaging in hate speech? So grab your swords and muskets, mateys, because a decision this egregious can’t be quietly tolerated. It’s time to rock the boat.
The Student Power Party is still planning to hold a screening of the film and a free speech forum on campus tonight. No word yet on whether the administration will allow that event to take place.
Feminists are sounding alarms online about the return to cyberspace of a male blogger who sexually assaulted a fellow college student in early 2007.
Kyle Payne, a self-described male feminist and anti-pornography activist, was an undergraduate at Iowa’s Buena Vista University, working as a resident advisor in BVU’s dorms, when he undressed and videotaped an unconscious, intoxicated student under his care.
Months after the assault, while his crime was still unknown, Payne began blogging on pornography, sexual violence, and other issues from a pro-feminist perspective. He continued to do so, without acknowledging his wrongdoing, even after he was arrested for, and pled guilty to, the assault. It was not until he was on the brink of incarceration that publicity forced him to admit his crime on his blog.
Both the fact of Payne’s crime and the manner in which he chose to discuss it generated tremendous outrage among feminist bloggers, and that outrage was revived and intensified last month when Payne, released from a six-month jail term, began blogging again.
Payne’s earliest post-incarceration posts made no mention of his crime or his punishment, although they did include reprints of pro-feminist essays he had written before the scandal broke — including several relating specifically to campus rape prevention. In response to subsequent criticism, he added a disclaimer referring to the sexual assault to his earlier pro-feminist and anti-rape posts, though no mention of his crime appears on the front page of his blog or in his new posts. (He discloses it at the very end of his “Blogger Bio” page, in a one-sentence statement that refers to the assault as a “non-violent sexual offense.”)
For a sampling of response to Payne’s return to blogging, see Renegade Evolution, Natalia Antonova, and Hugo Schwyzer.
First the distributors of the porn flick Pirates II grabbed the spotlight by offering their movie free of charge for screenings on college campuses.
Then Republicans in the Maryland state legislature grabbed the spotlight by threatening to cut government funding to any college that showed the movie.
Now candidates for the University of Maryland’s student government are grabbing the spotlight by screening the movie on campus in defiance of an administration veto.
The Student Power Party, a slate running in student government elections scheduled for this Tuesday and Wednesday, have announced that they will be running Pirates II in a lecture hall on Monday night — election eve. They’ll be holding a forum on free speech before the show.
More information on the SPP can be found here, here, and here. They’ve also got a Twitter account and a pretty good campaign ad.
Monday morning update: Here’s the latest on SPP’s plans for tonight, from the UM Diamondback.
Students at the University of Minnesota Duluth staged a protest and counter-concert when rapper Soulja Boy performed on campus on Friday night. UMD student Arielle Schnur said Soulja Boy’s songs “degrade half the student body as sex objects and the other half as sexual assault perpetrators.”
Protest organizers sat down with the director of the UMD student center to plot strategy for a protest that would raise awareness without disrupting the event. In an effort to ensure an orderly demonstration, organizers required participants to attend an informational session on protest rules before the gig.
The demonstrators’ counter-concert, held at the same time as the Soulja Boy show, was free and featured a lineup of local bands.
The protest was given a boost on Friday afternoon when Soulja Boy mentioned it on his Twitter feed.
studentactivism.net 
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