Sex Sells and W&M is Buying

Once again the Sex Workers Art Show, a dubious attempt by the prostitution industry to propel its image from the gutter into the realm of respectability, will be coming to the campus of William and Mary, this time February 4th. The show tours the country (www.sexworkersartshow.com/tourschedule.html), primarily “performing” on college campuses. Last year’s “performances” included obscene sexual demonstrations set to sacred music, a picture of which was in the Flat Hat. The school archives will have that issue for your perusal. Look for the Feb 16, 2007 edition, page 4, in the Swem Special Collections section, but be warned it is not for the faint of heart.

Thursday night, the Student Senate Finance Committee honored a request by the sponsoring department (it is unclear exactly who is sponsoring this year’s show) to augment the original $750 allotted last spring and approved by the College’s Board of Visitors. In theory, all costs may then be recouped via entrance fees set at $2 this year. Last year, no entrance fees were collected to offset the cost of the show. More than four hundred audience members showed up last year; if that holds true this year, the costs recouped will be nowhere near the total expenditure. This means the Sex Show, put on in a public building where the public pays the heating and lighting bills, is being subsidized with tax dollars. This tax-payer is not amused.

Some will argue that not allowing the show to go on is censorship, and indeed Nichol said as much last year after pulling the Wren Cross from the chapel in a censorship move that rocked our local community and alums across the country. The real issue is judgment. No institution has funds for every performance opportunity which presents itself for funding. There comes a time when “selection” is the operative word, where our leaders choose to fund only the best educational opportunities available and let the lesser choices fall mercifully off to the side. With limited budgets, why select a sex show with no educational value when you could, say, pay the speaker fees for Condoleezza Rice or Maya Angelou? Both women are role models worthy of funding and admiration. Oh, the educational value our students would gain!

But fees or no fees, the other real issue here is leadership. The president of the College has not only the right but the obligation to lead the faculty and students toward the best choices for education and for the College. Last year, when the Student Senate was to debate the Wren Cross issue, Nichol sent an entourage of faculty and administrative staff to fully explain to the Student Senate why removing the cross was the right thing to do.  Last year, when the Finance Committee was deciding to approve or disapprove funding for the sex show, Nichol, who should have gone himself, did not send anyone in to explain why such a show might not be in the best educational interest of the students or why funding it with public dollars might be problematic. Total silence. Here, as usual, silence means consent, despite Nichol’s assertion that he “didn’t like” the sex show. Well, he didn’t like the cross either, but that got the boot, didn’t it? The message from the president’s office is quite clear: sex shows are worthy of protection, religious symbols are not.

If, in the wisdom of all deciding bodies involved here, the Sex Show will appear in all its smutty glory in February, one can hope that perhaps someone will recognize that having the show yearly is truly not necessary. Once every four years would suffice to “educate” the student population. Even Sinfonicron doesn’t have a Gilbert and Sullivan production every year, but every two out of three, to give the College a variety of choices in performance art. The Sex Show deserves no less consideration.

Karla Kraynak Bruno

W&M ’81 and ‘92

Author of Mischiefs and Miseries: a novel of Jamestown 1607

The Virginia Gazette, Jan. 19, 2008