By Elizabeth Carlston
Although BYU strongly opposes pornography, some universities require students to complete classes with an emphasis on pornography.
At Wesleyan University in Connecticut, a woman sociology professor required students to create a work of pornography for their final project. Wesleyan spokesman Justin Harmon said the course was taught several years ago and the faculty member has since died.
'It was highly exceptional in our experiences,' Harmon said. 'The woman was running a sociology seminar that looked at pornography as a sociology issue. It was a high intentioned course. I am not sure what the purpose of having kids complete a project to create porn was intended to accomplish other than this is really boring, awful, sluggish stuff.'
BYU President Merrill J. Bateman said the trend of offering students pornography classes at the university level is damaging and disturbing.
In last week''s 'Cyber Secrets' conference on the effects of pornography, President Bateman said there are over 100,000 pornography Web sites on the Internet and over 200 more are added daily.
LaNae Valentine, director of BYU''s Women''s Services and Resources said pornography is no more of a problem here than anywhere else, but 'people care about it more here than other places in the world.'
'They''ve done surveys and polls of people saying they see pornography as a viable source of education and that is a very scary thought to me,' Valentine said.
Kirk Dougher, an assistant clinical professor at the Counseling and Career Center, said at BYU more than 25 percent of students suffer from pornography problems. Dougher said this is a low estimate.
'Outside of a religious or moral guiding population, suggesting that is inappropriate, most people don''t feel it is inappropriate to not do that ,' he said.
Pornography has many ill effects on our culture, Valentine said.
'It is a very selfish act. You are interacting with someone for what benefits you. People become objects rather than people,' Valentine said. 'You become desensitized to human beings. A dangerous message sent from pornography is that girls like it, they really want it or girls are lower than men.'
Valentine said an immediate problem of pornography occurs on campus because of the way women dress.
'Women who dress immodestly are just objectifying themselves. They say, ''I am a sex object, look at me,''' she said. 'They''re not saying, ''look at the whole person, but look at my body,'' and yet we are holding women up as role models.'
Valentine said the problem is getting worse and she expects it to continue to get worse because of the climate we live in.
'It behooves us to be strong enough to create our own culture and be strong enough that we don''t need to follow the trends of the world in order to have validation to feel like we are worth something,' she said. 'I hate to see our LDS culture get caught up in that. I think we are. I hate to see that happen.'
Valentine said most people don''t realize the inundation of pornography in our culture.
'Automatically when you zoom in on someone''s breast you are turning someone into an object and you are debasing them, because that is the only way you can justify looking at someone''s breast,' she said. 'Is that the kind of person you want to be?'