Porn. Perhaps no other four-letter word can elicit more outrage
and sheer excitement all at the same time.
Regardless of how high up the morality meter you place yourself,
the truth is that people look at pornography, and they’re
doing it right here at UCLA.
Of course, this will come as a shock to hardly anyone. Although
annual revenues for the entire porn industry have been estimated to
be as high as $10 billion, more conservative calculations recently
posted on LukeFord.com, a porn industry insider’s Web site,
have placed it somewhere between $2.6 to $3.9 billion, still an
impressive figure by any standards. With their considerable buying
power and undeniable interest in sex, college students no doubt
constitute an appreciable portion of those sales figures.
Though it is difficult, for obvious reasons, to get an accurate
count of how many UCLA students are actually partaking of the
various forms of adult entertainment available to them, there is
little doubt in the residence halls that many of them are.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if porn is on two out of
every three guys’ computers in the dorms,” said Mark
Malicdem, a second-year aerospace engineering student.
The popularity of porn among college students has received
considerable attention in the media recently. Yale University has
been home to the Porn “˜n Chicken club since 1996, where
members gather together to enjoy the best Popeye’s has to
offer while sampling a classic pornographic film. Last year, Comedy
Central produced and aired a film inspired by the club, leading
several major media outlets ““ including the New York Times
““ to speculate that porn has become a part of mainstream pop
culture on college campuses.
Many universities have gone so far as to institutionalize
pornography as a subject of study. Two years ago, USC invited
Steven Hirsch, president of Van Nuys-based Vivid Video Inc., a porn
industry giant, to address a business class. Here at UCLA, English
professor Christopher Mott teaches an upper division seminar about
pornography.
Just because porn may be considered commonplace by many college
students and faculty does not mean, however, that it exists without
controversy. Last year Brian Buck, a student at Arizona State
University, found this lesson out the hard way.
As a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity, Buck, along with members
of his and three other Greek organizations at Arizona State
University, participated in filming the adult video
“Shane’s World #29.” Adult film stars from Shane
Enterprises, the company that produced the film, arrived at the
Sigma Nu house with cameras and asked for help in conducting a
sexual scavenger hunt. Although no students actually had
intercourse with any of the actors, several, including Buck,
engaged in sexually suggestive activities.
When word of the video reached the offices of ASU’s
administration, Buck, who at the time was serving as Executive Vice
President of the Associated Students of ASU, was singled out for
punishment. He was asked to write essays and letters of apology,
and eventually left his student government position.
“ASU is an especially oppressive administration.
They’ve been trying so hard to change the party image that
ASU has had for so long, and they associate that with the Greek
system,” Buck said.
In what Buck feels was a direct result of the controversy
surrounding his involvement in the film, ASU’s Office of
Student Affairs implemented a new student code of conduct in
January that states that all students who participate in
extracurricular activities must represent the university with
“honor, dignity and integrity.” The vagueness of those
descriptors and the university’s ability to apply them to any
circumstance it finds appropriate has led the American Civil
Liberties Union to become involved in the case. So far, the new
code of conduct is still in place.
“I am really surprised that the University would (adopt a
code of conduct like that), especially considering that they have
professors who are conducting research that could be offensive to
the community,” said Professor Mott, who is himself an ASU
alumnus. “Frankly, I don’t see how that helps establish
their reputation as an academic and research
institution.”
UCLA’s student code of conduct is derived from a general
code that applies to the entire UC system. It does not include any
language that could be construed as a moral judgment, nor does it
have special rules that apply to students who participate in
extracurricular activities, according to the Dean of Students,
Robert J. Naples. The code does regulate more universal types of
misconduct such as theft, intoxication, weapons charges and
academic dishonesty.
“I think a lot of times campuses and individuals react to
their own sense of personal judgment, and that might get confused
with something that is clearly a First Amendment issue,”
Naples said of the ASU case.
The publicity generated from the controversy at ASU resulted in
extremely high sales figures for both “Shane’s World
#29″ and “Shane’s World #32,” which was
shot at Indiana University. On May 13, Shane Enterprises launched a
brand new spin-off series, “College Invasion #1,”
hoping to capitalize on the popularity of its previous
reality-based adult videos involving college students. Although the
company would not specify which schools were involved with the
latest film, Calli Cox, publicist and performer for Shane
Enterprises, said that several Southern California schools are
featured in the new film.
For now, it seems, UCLA students who might be tempted to
participate in the adult film industry, largely based in nearby San
Fernando Valley, have little to fear in the form of sanctions like
those imposed by officials at ASU. Nor should any resident porn
aficionados run back to their rooms and cover up the evidence:
There are no university rules that limit what kinds of images
students may view in their dorm rooms. As long as your neighbors
don’t complain about the cheesy ’70s music pouring out
of your room, feel free to find out exactly what Debbie was up to
in Dallas.
“Considering you can hear everything else going on on this
floor anyway, porn would really be the least of our worries,”
said Jolene Collins, a second-year psychobiology student living in
the residence halls this year.