The True Tale of Sharon and the Formerly Erotic City
Erotic City was begun by pathetic Lancer Society Hugh Heffner wannabes. (See
http://www.whittier.edu/lancers/e_city.htm) Whittier College not only accepted,
but, more, has encouraged, female students publicly demeaning, degrading, and
endangering themselves, and has misled male students to believe treating females
as sex objects is cool, by promoting the until recently on campus Erotic City
event. Indeed, Whittier College intervened to save Erotic City 2007. And student
government, controlled by a small minority of organized Societies members, working
with the administration, underwrites this at once silly, damaging, and dangerous
event - with student funds. Erotic City, with its drunken and drugged coeds
in makeup, bra, panties and heels, and that's it, has been a duck shoot for
Lancer Society Big Brothers, and some say other predators, who were the organizers
and on site inciters and cheerleaders of behaviors coeds duped by the Lancers
and Whittier College would rue one more mature day, if they remembered them,
for literally the rest of their lives.
Recently, due to Lancer Society incompetence, the event has had to be held off
campus. New President Sharon Herzberger, evidently imagined she could have it
both ways - using the fact that Erotic City is now held off campus to deny the
fact that Whittier College is liable for Erotic City, and at the same time portray
the event as an example of the College's respect for student self-expression,
which the College has in reality repeatedly disrespected. The College has been
well-aware of the essentially degrading and predatory nature of the Erotic City
event all along, that this event has not been student self-expression, but,
rather, a consequential con job pulled by the older on the younger. Yet the
College has not just continued to allow, but has, more, acted aggressively to
save the event when the Lancer Society has failed to keep or find Erotic City
venues.
Likewise, the Whittier College Societies' creature organization, the Associated
Students of Whittier College, continues to fund Erotic City as though it ever
had a positive value to students, has ever been anything but destructive for
students. (Fun is a higher principle that not only does not require the perpetuation
of inequality, degradation, and predation to be fully-realized, but is indeed
destroyed by these evils.) Everyone knows Erotic City is wrong, that's why the
event is held the weekend after Homecoming, after Alumni have left Whittier.
Whittier College Director of Student Activities Barney Peake stepped in to save
Erotic City 2007 (it seems violence and property damage on top of underage drinking,
illegal drug use, and the range of problems stemming from a general state of
undress in public, at the 2006 Erotic City venue, made it difficult for the
Lancers to find a new venue in Whittier), by negotiating use of a wing of the
Radisson Hotel as the 2007 Erotic City event venue. So much for denials of Whittier
College liability for Erotic City.
Eleventh hour pressure from Whittier College alumni and local religious leaders
prompted President Sharon Herzberger to falsely claim in an email to students
that there is no longer any connection between Erotic City and the College.
Make no mistake: Whittier College has always been and continues to be responsible
for Erotic City and what happens in relation thereto, and Whittier College not
only does not support free speech, but, more, does all within its power to control
information and speech, even when that endeavor is unethical and illegal, when
public perception of the College may be negatively impacted, despite the inevitable
blowback.
The unexpected eleventh hour pressure caught Sharon off balance, and her public
reaction, the email she sent to students on the eve of the 2007 event, sought
only to get Whittier College off the hook, to minimize damage to the College's
reputation and obfuscate its liability for Erotic City. Nothing about the Erotic
City event had changed from earlier years in 2007. The sole cause of Sharon
Herzberger's sudden conversion to decency was the concern expressed by Whittier
alumni and Whittier community members who finally became aware of the event's
nature, and naturally objected.
As an educational work, Sharon Herzberger's email to students failed, but then,
to be fair, education was not that email's objective, not anymore than were
student safety and values. John Lennon's Woman Is The Nigger Of The World tells
you everything Sharon Herzberger should've told you: "We make her paint
her face and dance." Herzberger wondered that female students would go
out in sexy lingerie and do the dirty in public, when she should've explained
why females do such things, why females degrade themselves, and that males,
contrary to what Sharon stated, don't so much degrade themselves as they are
misled to believe that females are stupid sluts undeserving of respect, and
so to act like predators. One expects more from a psychology professor, and
from a college president. Given the opportunity, females, like males, can and
do sell out, eh Sharon?
We do note an exceptional case in which males might degrade themselves at Erotic
City: If Whittier College ex-President James Lee Ash, Jr. was present. A Nevada
court made a restraining order keeping Dr. Ash from a named 18 year old boy,
and an extraordinary stay away order keeping ex-President Ash away from all
males under the age of 21 - all before Ash was imprisoned in that state for
drug trafficking. (See 'The InFamous and Otherwise Unlucky of Whittier College'
page on this site.)
Obviously, the counseling Jim Ash received at A Rainbow Place, Northern Nevada's
Gay and Lesbian Community Center, didn't help enough. Nevada court documents
reveal that Dr. James Lee Ash, Jr. was, while still President of Whittier College,
partying in Los Angeles just as he did later in Nevada, again raising the question
of what happened to cause Dr. Ash's officially unexplained departure from Whittier,
and renewing questions about Whittier College responsibility for Ash's victimization
of young people in Nevada, and the end of the only private liberal arts college
in Nevada, Sierra Nevada College.
Sharon might have wondered about a relationship between the degrading and predatory
attitudes encouraged in students by the College and its Societies through Erotic
City, and in too many other ways at Whittier College, despite all the PC platitudes
trotted out for a useless parade now and then, and the abnormally high sexual
assault rate at Whittier College. We do, the more so when it's alleged that
Society member-compromised Campus Safety discourages sexual assault and other
crime reports, and is alleged to have committed at least one sexual assault
on campus.
The 2007 Erotic City event history is also a shot over the bows of Whittier
College Societies. The cooperation, the collusion, between the College administration
and any Society is out the window without notice if a Society attracts a spotlight
focused on what really goes on at Whittier College. Erotic City is no longer
a major event, thanks to Sharon Herzberger. Literally overnight (remember this
when you have a problem with Whittier College and administration feet refuse
to move!), a decades old outrageously and dangerously out-of-control annual
event was tamed, despite the game effort of Society members to keep their annual
disgrace alive.
"Erotic City was really tame this year..."
"the bar at [Erotic City] was practically empty...so i'll bet that the
[Radisson] didn't make a lot of money."
"None of the Lancer alums were there. No Rickey or Lizer in sight."
"Arguments have certainly been made that [we] should get rid of [the Societies]
completely. I'm not certain where I stand on this. Though, how anyone could
find Eric Lizer or Rickey McDonald anything but creepy is beyond me."
whittiergate.com spotlighting made it too risky for the Lancer and other Society
Big Brothers who used to make a perverse feast of Erotic City to be openly involved
this year. An opinion piece (an ultimately worthless apples and oranges mess,
yet revelatory of the antipathy President Herzberger's emergency disclaimer
has provoked), published in Quaker Campus, has already taken issue with President
Herzberger's eleventh hour Erotic City email to students. The simple truth is
that Whittier College Societies will make a possibly terminal mistake in trusting
President Sharon Herzberger or any Whittier College employee from this point
in time on. Make a note, Brothers and Sisters.
No cameras were allowed at Erotic City 2007, and at least one was seen being
confiscated. Whittier College allowed only an exclusive Quaker Campus photo
opportunity at the bus boarding on campus, and
Q C reciprocated by publishing the blandest possible photo of only one small
group of would-be revelers (to whom we mean no offense if you were trying to
be scandalous).
Campus Safety officers were off campus at the Radisson Hotel (frisking coeds
in skimpy lingerie?!), which venue beefed up its own security, reminding us
of the Whittier College 2007 Homecoming Dance at the Radisson, to which students
under 21 years of age, most students, were denied entrance. Not that there isn't
competition, but that incredible Homecoming Dance mistake definitely ranks as
one of the biggest boners in recent Whittier College event planning history.
Question: Does Campus Safety have jurisdiction at the Radisson, or any place
off campus, excluding any possible hot pursuit exception (and coeds in only
their makeup, lingerie and heels, waiting to enter a Whittier College event,
may or may not be hot, but are definitely not a legal hot pursuit for on duty
law enforcement officers)?
The Radisson management, which like Whittier College knows Erotic City is just
plain wrong - they agreed to hide the event in an isolated part of the Hotel
- was also evidently pressured by Whittier community members who don't want
Erotic City off campus, in their community, just as the Hotel had been coerced
contrarily in earlier negotiations with the source of most of its business,
Whittier College. Doing business in a one-horse town can be challenging, but
the Radisson closed out 2007 with a streak of big mistakes in its dealings with
Whittier College and with students.
Without alcohol being knowingly provided to underage coeds at the event, without
drugs being passed out, without older Big Brothers who haven't been students
for years inciting young females with diminished capacity to further degrade
themselves, and young males there to further humiliate the females, and with
so few students attending, Erotic City disintegrated. There's something so incongruous
about getting smashed and stumbling in heels and lingerie, or boxers and slippers,
onto a school bus in a school parking lot that it just doesn't work, neither
for participants nor the College's disingenuous liability disclaimers.
"the bamboozlement continues. [Quaker Campus] called Erotic City successful
and safe. how are they a newspaper again?"
Quaker Campus claims that more than 350 students participated in Erotic City
2007, but that number is disputed by others on site. Even if the Q C's pro-event-distorted
coverage attendance claim is accepted, that means less than half as many attended
as had done so previously. Subtract the (it's believed inflated) 200 claimed
active Society members at Whittier College, and you see that less than 10% of
the overwhelming majority of independent Whittier College students fell this
year for the old Lancer Big Brother Erotic City con. It was also clear that
many of the females who did participate, despite Lancer pleas to the contrary
and as Quaker Campus admitted, wore more rather than less this year. There is
already talk of replacing Erotic City with a Halloween party.
The historical moment for Erotic City, if there ever was one at all for a school
founded (but then for conscience shunned) by Quakers, was the early 1960's,
around the time burning draft cards and the idea of burning bras ere momentarily
seen as radical, back when Blacks were properly referred to as Negroes, back
when no one had even imagined a Hispanic-Serving Institution much less pretending
to be one. As a social marker, Lennon's Woman Is The Nigger Of The World wasn't
released until 1972. The succession of female presidents at Whittier College,
since Dr. James Lee Ash, Jr. left Whittier at the end of the 1990's for a cause
yet to be officially revealed, and embarked on his now well-known criminal career
leading to stays in mental hospitals and incarceration in Nevada prisons, all
not only allowed, but, more, provided critical help to Erotic City, so that
it flourished like the infamous annual Whittier College dorms plagues, which
the College is also no doubt officially against even as it does nothing to end.
It was not until pressure was finally brought to bear that Whittier College
finally had to take action to at least curb Erotic City excesses, which were
what made the event a 'success' in its own twisted clinging to outrageous exploitation
of a tired and worn out inequality, one the College has falsely claimed at the
same time to have overcome at Whittier.
If gender equality existed at Whittier College, there would be no Erotic City
participants to be found, neither female nor male. Now in 2008, it seems that
Whittier College's female Society members are pretty much the only Whittier
coeds who are, like hypocritical administrators, happy to throw away the gender
equity gains made by females and males over the past 50 years. Make a note:
Loyalty is no substitute for thinking for oneself.
It was not until Sharon Herzberger was shamed that she took any action in this
regard, other than having Director of Student Activities Barney Peake save the
event, and finally mandated, and enforced through Campus Safety officers, safety
measures by the Lancers. Again, Sharon Herzberger's reaction was all about seeking
to appease critics and distance Whittier College from its liability for Erotic
City, an event the College should obviously never have allowed in the first
place, not about equality, education, free speech, nor any honest or good cause.
If Sharon Herzberger was committed to equality, education, and free speech,
she'd have been in the College parking lot and then in front of the Radisson
Hotel, with a lot of other College community members, engaging students in discussion,
protesting against Erotic City 2007, if a personal appearance before or letter
from her to the ASWC, requesting an end to funding for Erotic City, had failed
to effect a funding cutoff; if Sharon Herzberger was a college president worth
paying, she would lead. The truth is that Sharon Herzberger was comfortable
enough with Erotic City continuing - until she was publicly shamed for just
that.
Whittier students, who, instead of voting for a female for Mr. Whittier to tweak
the Societies, and effectively boycotting the 2007 ASWC elections, allowing
the Societies to continue setting a tone embarrassing everyone, should've run
and elected independent students to ASWC offices. By their own abstentions and
votes, Whittier College students have only diminished the value of their own
degrees. The complete disdain shown for the ASWC and Whittier College generally
by Whittier College students, in 2007 by electing lesbian activist Alex Sheldon
Homecoming king, and then generally ignoring the ASWC 2007 election, an election
therefore with no choice in two races and no meaningful choice in the only contested
race (weren't all the candidates Society members this year, just like all the
ASWC officers were last year?), betrays student best interests and reveals a
complete failure on President Sharon Herzberger's part to engage students and
to lead Whittier College.
Evidently, the President is too busy ignoring hazing while trying to strengthen
the Societies, Andre Coleman calling Society members the best of Whittier College,
when in fact, indeed, they engage in hazing misconduct and crime, intimidate
depledges, place loyalty before common sense and any sense of genuine nobility,
work against the development of the character needed for leadership, and for
whom community service is a mere footnote to their partying history, practically
always involving underage drinking and often illegal drug use. Many people consider
sexual assault a serious problem, to be solved, at Whittier College, and most
of those concerned people consider Whittier College student and employee Society
members as the principal culprits and protectors of the culprits.
"My first semester at Whittier College, I was warned by numerous students
to never attend any Society house parties alone for fear of sexual assault."
Whittier College wants students bound to it through its Societies, wants their
proportionally greater giving to the College, and so the College must face its
liability for its Societies. It will only take one or two lawsuits against Whittier
College to wipe out the financial gains the College would see from relatively
greater Society alumni giving, and that loss of ill-begotten gain would be dwarfed
by the future income lost for bad publicity.
Now that the issue of liability for the Erotic City event, wherever it may be
held, will continue to be spotlighted, stumbling Sharon Herzberger, assuming
she's still Whittier College President next year, will have to choose between
doing something about an event that was lasciviously conceived and has done
untold damage to untold numbers of students and the school's reputation, over
decades, and doing nothing, and so setting the College up for inevitable lawsuits.
Among observers on and off campus, Sharon's failure to take the lead continues
to characterize her as a less than an effective leader or educator.
"Woman is the nigger of the world / Think about it...do something about
it."
http://www.lyricsdepot.com/john-lennon/woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world.html