By James Riswick
Staff Writer
So the faculty is having a problem with the sex policy, eh? How interesting.
Seems to me like it would be a rather dubious double standard if Pepperdine’s professors could engage in unbridled carnal lust and sin whilst we crazy students cannot. Not that lifting the ban for students would really increase the amount of such behavior, but as long as “sexual relations of any kind outside of marriage” are inconsistent with the values of Pepperdine, it seems a little unfair for faculty to be exempt.
Both students and faculty members are adults. Both are supposed representatives of Pepperdine’s community and good name and keepers of its moral values. Both signed on to Pepperdine knowing full well about the university’s penchant for upholding strict Christian beliefs. I admit it flat out stinks for faculty who want to lead what I would consider a fairly normal life. Heck, I wouldn’t really care if my professors had 13 wives and 47 illegitimate children spread across the lower 48 states and Southeast Asia.
But such is the nature of the Pepperdine beast, and if Pepperdine thinks this sort of behavior is not acceptable for students on and off campus, it is ridiculous for other members of the university “community” to be exempt from these rules of morality.
The administrators who came up with the section of the faculty handbook that threatens disciplinary action against those who violate the university’s sex policy say they dismissed the idea that official policing would take place. But some faculty pointed out that it would be other professors who would do the policing and that the administration would have no choice but to act.
For instance, what if you think your fellow professor is gay and don’t like it? You just might be able to get rid of him. The policy’s opponents feel this unnecessarily threatens their jobs and intrudes into their lives. It sure does. But you know what? The same thing happens to students and most of us don’t like it any more than these faculty members do. Especially off-campus students who could still theoretically come under disciplinary action from the university for living with a significant, non-married-to other or even just having a roommate of the opposite sex.
Again, students and faculty alike represent Pepperdine and it’s up to both to maintain the supposed moral values of the university. If the faculty doesn’t, it seems unfair that the students should.
Or perhaps the supposed moral values of the university need to be reexamined a bit. Today, some people live with each other before marriage, some have sex before marriage, some are — gasp — gay. These things are not the end of the world, and believe it or not, most people in such situations are just as moral and decent as those who strictly adhere to what the university considers acceptable behavior.
I’ll agree with members of the faculty: being disciplined for inappropriate “sexual relations” should not happen. But as long as students can be, there is no reason why professors shouldn’t follow the same moral guidelines as well.
— Should professors and students have the same standards? E mail James Riswick at jriz29@hotmail.com.
February 06, 2003