“College chaplain to host BDSM workshop”?

Hey, Rhodes College, hold my beer. 

I know a little bit about wacky happenings on small liberal arts college campuses, having graduated from one (Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota) an, um, generation ago.

BDSM lecture causes Rhodes uproar

How about “the naked floor,” a dorm dedicated to, well, free expression?

That’s a real thing that happened at my college back in the ’90s. Or, I guess, like this would-be workshop that made waves, a real thing that almost happened. 

When I saw the story from Rhodes, first in a hysterical (in multiple ways!) Townhall.com column from professional scold Todd Starnes, shared internally by a colleague, I flashed back to that footnote in my own collegiate past, asking a few former classmates if they shared my recollection. 

Memories varied, but after digging up a few old copies of our college newspaper, The Mac Weekly, I found evidence:

“PBIC disbanded,” read the headline, on a bottom corner of page 1.

From the courtroom to campus, new Rhodes president always had a mission

The school, which didn’t have fraternities or sororities, began to allow “special interest communities,” where groups of students could apply to live together in certain dorms or on floors of certain dorms, based on some kind of commonality. There was a Veggie Co-op, with its own kitchen and food storage space. There was Hebrew House, where dietary demands were also part of the rationale. There was a computing floor, where the rooms were wired together. 

And there was almost the Positive Body Image Community, which was initially approved and then later scrapped after, per a quote from the Dean of Students, the petitioners were asked to “clarify the distinction between their intellectual and programmatic concerns and their behavior.”

At least it resulted in this classic college newspaper kicker quote, from one of the PBIC organizers:

“(The Dean of Residential Life) was very encouraging,” he said. “I wonder if the floor would have passed if not for the naked Frisbee.”

Was that a serious proposal, an appropriately sophomoric joke on the idea of “special interest communities” or just a way of testing the limits of how far the school would meet its students? (Which turned out to be pretty far, but not quite that far.)

U of M law school rattled by student-made blackface caricature

I do remember this: Gender-neutral bathrooms. I lived in a dorm that had them.

This was decades before the practice became so common that you can now encounter it at plenty of Memphis coffee shops, bars and restaurants. It was a response to some specific design issue in the dorm and opposition to making the space single-sex. It seemed odd and turned out to be … a total non-issue. 

I also remember three student sit-ins in one semester, one over a tenure decision, one over a decision not to create an Ethnic Studies department and one over … I can’t remember.

At the end of every semester we did a spoof issue of our paper, which became The Mock Weekly. 

Our front page headline that semester: STUDENTS PROTEST CONTINENTAL DRIFT.

New Rhodes exhibit ‘in conversation’ with Brooks’ ‘Black American Portraits’

We weren’t being dismissive, but from the snarky confines of a newspaper office we laughed at the student body — i.e., ourselves — as something like Marlon Brando in “The Wild One.” 

“What are you protesting against?”

“Whaddya got?”

College, man. (Sorry for the gender-specific vernacular!)

Some of that stuff, and a lot more like it, was funny and some of it was embarrassing and some of it was righteous and how we might have assigned those designations then might not match how we would assign them now. 

But there was one common thread: None of it was covered — or mocked — by any publication but our college newspaper.

Which brings us back to Rhodes.

Yes, young people (and their chaplains): It was perhaps better to be at a school in those pre-Internet-as-we-now-know-it days, and not have have some shameless right-wing website trawling campus news in search of an outrage or to have a band of Facebook busybodies butting in. 

Freshmen classes are more diverse, but enrollments are largely down

Look, college is weird. It’s full of people who don’t have it all figured out just yet. (This includes the adults and sorry, everybody, but you maybe will never have it all figured out.) It also should be a space for all kinds of discussions on all kinds of topics, even ones that send Townhall.com to its fainting couch. 

Small liberal arts colleges are their own kind of hothouse communities, tight-knit spaces where students have the privilege of test-driving adulthood with a pretty good safety net. 

This is a story that shouldn’t have been, not because this workshop as conceived was a bad idea, though maybe that, too, but because the outside world didn’t really need to know about it, much less get worked up.

I don’t mean to make (too much) light of something that has undoubtedly caused some strain, but I take a dim view of the off-campus rabble rousers here, even if some are alums, and am heartened by the sanity of the student quoted in Jane Roberts’ story about the I-guess-it’s-now-a-controversy. 

The student didn’t want her name in the story, and I don’t blame her, but her reaction reflected well on the kind of education Rhodes is providing and the kind of community the college is trying to foster, and I’m guessing this student reflected a lot of common campus sentiment:

“When I first heard about this, it was obviously a little out there. But also, I just feel like being a liberal arts institution, there’s always so many different perspectives and ideas and people, all on campus. So, honestly, I was not surprised.”

Rhodes awarded $800K for new race and social transformation institute

And: 

“My understanding from the majority of campus is that most people really didn’t mind … one thing we pride ourselves on is we’re willing to talk about anything, even though it could be uncomfortable or not in everyone’s perspective.”

Anyway, it sounds like the administration put the kibosh on the event even before it went national, much as another did with a “naked floor” a generation ago. 

It also sounds like the community was managing itself just fine. 

I have to hand it to Rhodes, though “College chaplain hosts BDSM workshop” sounds less like something that would have happened at my school in the ’90s than like a Mock Weekly headline we would have made up.

But, to paraphrase the Velvet Underground, who knew a thing or two about BDSM (or pretended to), these are different times.

If this workshop had gone forward, I strongly suspect it would not have been nearly as salacious as in Starnes’ no-doubt feverish imaginings. 

Rhodes students working with noted hip-hop scholar

I’m guessing it would have been more like what one of the reader comments on Roberts’ story suggests: “This event would have flown under the radar and be forgotten, with maybe 20 students attending.”

I thought the notion of the workshop was absurd when I first saw it.

But the wise shrug from one Rhodes student has turned me around a little. 

Upon reflection, I’d rescind my initial judgment. 

Instead I’d move myself to “undecided” and, even more so and more importantly, to “you know what, I don’t need to pass judgement on this. The kids are alright. Their chaplain probably is, too.”

I’d recommend that conclusion to Starnes and the others upset as well.