Subject: Re: Display of nudes

From: [email-masked] (Fred Sullivan)
Date: 9 Oct 92 10:14:10

About a year ago, immediately after we installed a lab of color
workstations, a number of students began displaying pictures of women in
various stages of dress or undress.  The computer science faculty discussed
the situation (this is a departmental laboratory) and decided to follow, at
least for the time being, the following policy:

We do not dictate what students may or may not display on their computer
screens.  We do, however, feel free to exercise our own rights to free
speech and tell students precisely what we think of their actions.

I am personally not comfortable with attempting to set rules on this
subject.  Would we, for example, ban the display of the image of a painting
of a nude which might appear in any art gallery?  Probably not.  Many of the
images being displayed on screens in our lab were very far from art (in my
opinion), but where do you draw the line (what is the objective standard)?
Of course, this is a very difficult and probably unanswerable question.

On the other hand, I know it when I see it.  Therefore I see no problem at
all with calling a student in and telling him the following (I say him,
because my institution does not currently admit women at the undergraduate
level -- this will change in 2 years, and so far I have not felt the need
to have a conversation of this type with a female graduate student or
faculty member):

1.  Our department has no policy against display of the kind of material in
question.
2.  I am not going to tell him that he has to remove the pictures.
3.  My personal opinion is that he is acting like a adolescent jerk.
4.  He should spend some time thinking about the effect the material being
displayed might have on:
	parents of prospective students who are visiting the campus,
	female staff and faculty members who might feel that they are being
sexually harassed.
5.  He should reflect on the fact that soon he will graduate and find
himself working with, and quite possible for women, and that perhaps he
should review his attitudes towards women, if for no other reason, than out
of self interest.

A little over a year ago, I had this conversation with 4 students, and I
have not seen nudes displayed in our lab since that time.

Now you can say that although I explicitly told the students they were under
no compulsion, there was nevertheless coercion on my part.  That is no doubt
true.  However, my (admittedly limited) experience indicates that students
react much better to being told to grow up and begin to adopt a professional
attitude than they do to being told to remove pictures of nudes.

--
Fred Sullivan                           6060 Wabash Avenue
Computer Science Department             Terre Haute, IN  47803
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology     [email-masked]