Avoiding the Topic

Outta Leftfield: Sex in the name of education gives new meaning to PDA
Published: Wednesday, March 09, 2011
By Mike Morsch
Executive Editor

The list of things I don't want Borsch to write about could probably circle the globe; this one is at the top of the list.

Oh boy. Cover your eyes on this next topic. At the very least, it’s got an R-rating, maybe worse. And you kids out there, well, you may need to explain some of this to your parents.

So... he didn't want to write about poop in his last column, even though he has before. But he'll write about sex. I shudder.

Turns out a sexuality professor at Northwestern University has raised some eyebrows recently by offering his students the opportunity to watch, uh … um … a live sex demonstration as part of the class. (Now would be the time for the more prudish among you to read with one eye covered.)

It appears that at Northwestern, PDA doesn’t stand for Public Display of Affection but Pretty Dadgummed Amazing.

Since he's writing about something that's been reported on by someone else, can we expect the typical "According to a story on [website name]" sentence?

Let me say this upfront: I graduated from a Big Ten school, the University of Iowa, and I hail from Illinois,

HOLY CRAP! You don't say so!

so I am familiar with Northwestern University, a fine institution of higher education in Evanston, Ill., just north of Chicago. It’s always had a top-notch journalism program.

If you graduated from it, sir, it dropped a notch.

But obviously, I was educated in a different era. As a not-yet-18-year-old going off to school in the fall of 1977, I had trouble adjusting to college life. When the first semester grades came out, I got a call from my dad.

“Hey, son, I just received your semester grades,” my dad, a school superintendent with a master’s degree in education, said into the phone.

After stating that he received his grades, is it really necessary to have another sentence stating that he received his grades? Cut one, for Pete's sake! You're an EDITOR!

“Really? How’d I do, Pop?” I said, rather smugly, typical of the young wannabe jock who was convinced at that point he was going to play professional baseball for a living.

Instead, he makes his living not being able to write about baseball.

“Not so good young man. You got a 1.7 grade point average,” he said with more than a bit of disgust. “What are you doing out there in Iowa?”

“Well, best I can tell, I’m playing baseball, drinking beer and chasing women,” I said to my dad.

Completely fictional conversation, obviously. And completely unnecessary "I said to my dad" - we KNOW who you're talking to, sir.

“I don’t think that’s why you’re there, young man,” he countered. (He always called me “young man” when he was particularly peeved at me.)

“Well, Pop, I don’t know how much better it can get for me,” I said.

At which point he reached through the phone and slapped me back into reality.

Borsch either has flawless recall, or this was really the most hilarious exchange he could think up. Which is sad.

I tell that story to illustrate not only the change in times, but the change in attitudes. I can guarantee you that my smart-alecky remark elicited that type of reaction that one would expect from a school administrator in 1977. In fact, I was grounded until just last year, five years after my dad died. (He was as intimidating on education issues as much in death as he was in life, and his will clearly stated that I was to remain grounded until 2010.)

He mustn't have been a very good educator, or he might have cautioned you against using "as" and "as much" in the same sentence like that. Fool.

But I can assure you that if my answer would have been, “I’m playing baseball, drinking beer, chasing women AND viewing live sex shows in class,” my dad would have been in his car on the way to Iowa City to drag me by my ear back to Peoria. And he would have knocked down the entire university with his bare hands just to make his point that live sex shows were not a lifelong educator’s idea of “educating.”

So far we've had a whole lot of "illustrating," and a whole little of the purported topic of this column.

According to wire service reports,

There we go.

the Northwestern professor, John Michael Bailey, was teaching the sexuality class one session that focused on kinky sex. (There was no sex in Iowa in the 1970s, let alone kinky sex. In fact, I haven’t been back to Iowa in a while but I’m fairly certain little has changed in the sexual mores department in the Heartland.)

What's with the "in fact"? It's clear that he's actually trying to be funny this time around, but it's equally clear he has no idea how to succeed.

Professor Bailey, reportedly one of the more popular teachers at Northwestern (go figure), often ends his class sessions by inviting students to stay after class to hear additional lectures from sex therapists, swingers, transgender women and others.

(I can hear my dad now: “Young man, what’s a transgender woman?”)

Ah, that really is just what he'd say! Classic Elder Morsch.

Apparently, after the session in question, Bailey had invited a guy and his fiancée who were “turned on by the thought of sex acts in the nude in front of large groups of people” to participate in a demonstration.

As I often do in these types of situation, I like to quote that great philosopher Scooby-Doo: “Rut-row Raggy.”

I had that "rut-row" thing with the very core of my being. People can say it a billion times and still think it's fresh and witty. To quote Family Guy, it's as lame as FDR's legs, and it's aged as well, too.

Talk about extra credit. I won’t go into any further detail except to say that about 100 students stayed after class to watch, word got out that this sort of thing was sanctioned by the university, some folks got their shorts in the knot and the Scooby-Doo hit the fan.

Poop reference! Not so squeamish about it now, are you? But still pretty shy about addressing the topic of your column in any way. Don't worry - with a few more years of practice, you'll get there.

But leave it to the free press to come to the rescue. The university’s newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, defended the decision to allow the sex demonstration and called it relevant to the class discussion of kinky sex. (I’m going to have to review my college transcripts. I don’t recall that Kinky Sex 101 was available.)

My advice would be to read your own story - it was a section in a class on sexuality, not its own class.

Those ratfink school newspaper folks, always a bastion of liberal thought — and apparently a bit into kinky as well.

It all makes me wonder if education has passed me by.

Yes. Yes it has.

I mean, I’m old, but I’m not dead. In fact, I’ve been toying with the idea of going back and getting my master’s degree.

At Northwestern. In journalism, of course.

Maybe you should start by taking an entry-level composition course.