A college in Utah is giving new meaning to the term “student body.”
Westminster College, a private institution in Salt Lake City, is facing extreme backlash over a pornography course being offered to young men and women this year.
That’s not a euphemism or an exaggeration.
We’re talking an actual, hardcore pornography course here.
“Hardcore pornography is as American as apple pie and more popular than Sunday night football,” the course description reads, as you can see down below.
The class is listed as one of the film courses available at the school where students will analyze “this billion-dollar industry is as both a cultural phenomenon that reflects and reinforces sexual inequalities,” based on this same description.
It continues:
“We will watch pornographic films together and discuss the sexualization of race, class, and gender and as an experimental, radical art form.
The instructor of the course is named Eileen Chanza Torres.
She spoke this week to a local ABC affiliate and explained that the course is meant to be critical of pornography — and not for her students to “watch porn, giggle and go home.”
This is serious stuff, people!
Said the school in a statement to KSL TV:
“Westminster College occasionally offers elective courses like this as an opportunity to analyze social issues.
“As part of this analysis, Westminster College and universities across the county often examine potentially offensive topics like pornography to further understand their pervasiveness and impact.
“Descriptions of these courses, while alarming to some readers, help students decide if they wish to engage in serious investigation of controversial subjects.”
No one associated with the school, outside of Torres, has gone on record with a defense of the course.
It’s perhaps also worth noting that the class is an elective, meaning that students do not have to take the class, according to the university.
A petition to remove the class, though, has been signed by more than 450 people, at the time of this article being written.
The documents and, by extension, its signees claim that “these are not Utah values.”
And that this “creates an unsafe environment for students and faculty and normalizes pornography in culture.”
