Lemmings: St. Louis University Bans V-Day

Thursday, February 14, 2008

St. Louis University Bans V-Day

The administrators at SLU have banned V-Day -- a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...: Brit,

Have they really banned V-day? It looks more to me like they banned the two plays that are often put on for V-day (and the selling of tickets for those plays on campus grounds), but not the actual celebration of V-day. Or the collecting of money for charities.

Tim; 14/2/08 08:11
Brit Brogaard said...: Tim,

From the letter: "V-Day is a world-wide movement to end violence against women and girls that raises funds and awareness primarily through annual benefit productions of The Vagina Monologues"

By banning the productions of The Vagina Monologues, they are effectively banning V-Day.; 14/2/08 08:22
Anonymous said...: Brit,

Thanks for the quick response.

My worry is that the site you link to makes it look like SLU banned V-day because it doesn't want women to have control over their lives, dislikes the word 'vagina' and either doesn't realize or doesn't care that violence against women occurs.

It looks, though, like the real reason that we can say SLU (effectively) banned V-day is because it found something (it thought was) contrary to its Catholic identity in the plays and banned them. [I agree with the letter-writer that banning the plays because they are 'redundant' is BS--doesn't SLU put on The Genius of Women each year?]. As a consequence of banning the plays, the primary means of celebrating V-day was banned, and that effectively bans V-day.

Those two stories of how and why SLU banned V-day are quite different and elicit different judgments about SLU. If SLU banned V-day because it wants women to lack control over their lives, dislikes the word 'vagina' and doesn't care about violence against women, that's morally reprehensible. If SLU thought it found something contrary to its Catholic identity in the plays and thus banned them, that doesn't strike me as morally reprehensible. Maybe an error in judgment--maybe a grave error in judgment--but not morally reprehensible.

Thanks again,
Tim; 14/2/08 08:46
Anonymous said...: I'm from SLU: The administration actually objected to the use of the word vagina in one of the pieces about rape, and wanted it to be replaced with the word woman instead.; 15/2/08 01:51
Anonymous said...: I'm in agreement with G.B. Shaw on this one: "Catholic University" is a contradiction in terms.; 15/2/08 16:50

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