Call it strange. Call it bizarre. Call it an exercise in First Amendment rights. But whatever you do, don’t call it education.

That’s what critics say about universities that brought pornographic speakers and events to their campus over the last few years — events that go from the titillating to the downright raunchy.

Take, for example, Penn State University, which has had three sex-oriented events on campus over the last 12 months: the most recent a speaking engagement by Hustler Publisher Larry Flynt on Oct. 4, as well as a "Sex Faire" last spring and another festival in late 2000 titled with a profane term for the female anatomy.

"The Sex Faire in Happy Valley, where Penn State is, was supported and sponsored by a part of the university," says Bill Devlin, executive director of the Urban Family Council in Philadelphia, who protested the events. "They had Orgasm Bingo, and they also had a Tent of Consent, where two people could walk in and sign a release form, and then do whatever [they] wanted to do for two minutes. As everyone knows, you can do a lot in two minutes."

When a state legislator went to the Faire with video camera in hand, Devlin says, the Tent of Consent was shut down.

And in November 1997, a similar event titled Revolting Behavior was held at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where people sold sex toys, solicited for sex and engaged in sadomasochism.

Campus events aren’t the only places where students can get an explicit education, though. Over the last decade, a growing number of universities have been including pornography in the classroom curricula. For instance, Constance Penley’s University of California-Santa Barbara film studies class has looked at smut "as another genre of film, like Westerns or science fiction," since 1993, according to an interview she gave the Boston Globe earlier this year. And for the last five years, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Director of Comparative Media Studies Henry Jenkins has had his class analyze photos from Hustler and clips from X-rated movies like Deep Throat. Wesleyan University women’s studies professor Hope Weissman has required students to produce a work of pornography as their final project.

And while the trend may have begun with Ivy League and other elite schools, it has spread to tiny, out-of-the-way places as well. In late November, an English professor at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., announced that she would begin teaching a senior seminar in which students would watch pornographic films, look at photos and read racy texts as a way of understanding its influence on society.

"It’s not that you should study (porn)," says Richard Burt, a University of Massachusetts English professor and author of the book Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares, "but why shouldn’t you? Sometimes the argument is that porn is bad, therefore it shouldn’t be studied. That’s like saying Nazism was bad, so we shouldn’t study it."

But Victor Cline, Ph.D., a professor emeritus at the University of Utah and a clinical psychologist who has worked with sex addicts for 25 years, says that offering classes on pornography "is like giving a course on cocaine. All you’re doing is putting people at risk."

What’s the harm?
When students are given the option to take a class on pornography or attend a campus event, what’s the harm in having them analyze a few photos, watch a few blue movies, peek at some explicit Web sites? You’ve got to have the kind of academic freedom of intellectual inquiry and free speech protected by the First Amendment, right?

"Certainly there are drugs that people can become addicted to, but to universalize that and say because some people like something that they’re addicted to it, I think that’s a way of shutting down understanding and intellectual inquiry," UMass’s Prof. Burt says. "The point of (these classes) is whether students are free to ask these questions or not; see this material if they wish or not. It’s as simple as that."

But new research is showing that it’s really not that simple, according to Mary Anne Layden, Ph.D., director of the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania.

An as-yet unpublished study originally geared toward the brain function of cocaine addicts shows some disturbing activity in the brains of normal people exposed to pornography. Researchers put together a test group of cocaine addicts and a control group of people with no known addictions or personality disorders, then took PET scans of their brains while they viewed pictures of animals, and another set while they looked at pictures of other people taking cocaine. The cocaine addicts’ brains had a dramatically different response to the photos of people using drugs than to the animal photos; the non-addicts brains showed no significant differences.

But when researchers showed the control group pornographic photos, different areas of their brains lit up — and their PET scans closely resembled those of the cocaine addicts while they were looking at the photos of drug use.

"That sets up some interesting questions," Layden says. "We’re seeing the same symptoms in porn addicts as we do in cocaine addicts — but it’s harder for the porn addict to go into remission than the cocaine addict, and they’re more likely to relapse.

"When you’re treating cocaine addicts, you start with detox to get it out of their system before you start counseling. But with a porn addict, that substance can be called up at a moment’s notice, forever. Any lesson learned in the presence of arousal will be learned better, remembered longer and acted on more often. (You’re dealing with) a permanently implanted addictive substance. So it’s a very hard disorder to treat."

The problem with pornography isn’t just in the way the images adhere themselves to a person’s memory. It’s in the messages they send.

"Sexual violence perpetrators have permission-giving beliefs," Layden says. "There’s the rape myth, that women like it, need it, etc. There are (similar) pedophile myths. All are permission-giving beliefs, and all are transmitted in pornography. They’re damaging to normal relationships and encouraging to pathology and violence, so I can’t imagine why we would want to show them to young people. There are classes on campus that talk about LSD, but you won’t get any of it."

Standing up for decency—and safety
What may be most frightening about a college that holds pornography classes and sex fairs isn’t what it reveals about the administration’s depravity. It’s what it may mean for students in the dorms and on Greek Row. Safety is a top concern on college campuses, and the relatively recent phenomenon of men dumping GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate, a.k.a the date-rape drug) into women’s drinks has parents more concerned than ever about what kind of sexual stimuli college men are receiving.

In 1990, a University of Pennsylvania woman was gang-raped by some fraternity members after they attended a party where pornographic movies were being shown — an event chronicled in Peggy Sanday’s book Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus. The criminal investigation explored the role the movies played in the rape.

"If you want sexual violence on campus," Layden says, "you can tutor it using pornographic movies. Movie imagery is massively potent to tutor behaviors."

With that kind of documentation, why haven’t leading institutions of higher learning banned pornographic classes and events? That, says Layden, may be the most troubling question of all.

"There are a number of faculty members who either do not understand the damage it might cause, or who are victims of the damage themselves and therefore in denial of it," she says. "I’ve been speaking out about this issue for a long time. The powers that be don’t want to hear about it. I’m a professor here, a director of education, and those aren’t credentials enough for them to want to hear it.

"Why won’t these professors be interviewed or allow other professors to sit in on their classes? Clearly it’s a breach of ethics. There’s a whole lot of stuff that’s unethical and psychologically unhealthy that’s not illegal. It’s not illegal to wash your hands 400 times a day, but it is sick."

American Decency Association President Bill Johnson believes it will take a massive effort from students to rid their own campuses of these problems, some frank talk from the nation’s pulpits to help — and a boycott from Christian parents wouldn’t hurt, either. Since some porn classes aren’t included in course listings, it might take a visit to the campus and some chats with long-time professors to find out what’s really going on.

"What does God have to say about guarding your heart and mind, placing no wicked thing before yourself, and what do we have to deal with when we open ourselves up to lust and lasciviousness?" Johnson asks.

"It takes one person on these key college campuses to become aware of it and recognize they are in a spiritual battle," he adds. "They need to make that a personal crusade, to rally the churches and make it an issue in the local community. Too often, people look at ministries as being able to solve their problems, and that’s a real mistake because grassroots matters like this need to be fought by local people with the grace of God.

"They’ll feel inadequate and like it’s David vs. Goliath—but there are still people winning David vs. Goliath battles today."