September 5, 2013 (NCLN) – In case anyone wasn’t yet aware that Canadian campus culture is in need of some change, Frosh Week at St. Mary’s University in Halifax recently provided a graphic case-in-point.
The shocking Instagram video of the university’s frosh event is a PR nightmare for the institution, making national headlines thanks to the orientation officials' championing of underage, non-consensual sex. Or that’s what the Canadian Press called it. Last time I checked, ‘non-consensual sex’ was the definition of rape.
The troupe of chanting boys yelled gleefully: “SMU boys we like them YOUNG! Y is for your sister. O is for oh so tight. U is for underage. N is for no consent. G is for grab that ass.”
The girls seemed to be giggling awkwardly and someone, obviously, found it entertaining enough to post on Instagram.
The St. Mary’s administration is, understandably, upset and the student leaders will be receiving sensitivity training. Personally, I think something a little more intensive is in order. Perhaps a complete psych workup to find out how their critical thinking, reasonable thinking, and thinking in general went completely out the window…
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But the broader question for all of us is how did they get an entire group singing along? Unless something has radically changed in a couple years, these students would have, like me, grown up in our politically-correct school system with comprehensive sex-ed, teachers who were very sensitive to gender neutral pronouns, self-defence gym classes, and a heck of lot of quasi-feminist rhetoric. So…how does this chant happen? And how did everyone in the video go along with it?
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that our society still accepts and even applauds, at times, an objectification of women. From TV to magazines to storefront displays, marketers play on human insecurities and promote a sexed up ideal that will somehow, they suggest, fulfill us. Porn is now a staple of many a man’s browsing history – and increasingly younger and younger boys are exposed to and becoming addicted to porn. And for us girls there’s Fifty Shades of emotional abuse and an ever-expanding industry of such wasted paper. (There’s much more that could be listed but this is supposed to be an article and not the introduction to a ten volume book.)
And so, as we enter a new school year, we should be aware that human worth and human respect is under attack in our world, our country, and our campuses. We must be willing to challenge our culture and insist upon the value of all human beings, none of whom should be spoken of as the SMU boys did.
In our work, we start with the very basic principle: that all human beings deserve human rights. We reaffirm that all of us are fundamentally equal, no matter our gender, our race, or our age. And we proclaim boldly that women and men deserve better than abortion and a culture that callously discards the most vulnerable of the human family.
The Instagram video is embarrassing to St. Mary’s University, but it should embarrass Canadian society in general. It’s time that we realized that healing our culture will take more than decades of ‘no means no’ campaigns. Pro-lifers realize this. So welcome to another school year. We have work to do.
Rebecca Richmond is the executive director of the National Campus Life Network. This piece is reprinted with permission.