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.
Update: Whittier College Insults Community By Continuing Objectionable Event By Another Name
The Lancer Society's 'Erotic City' event has been saved, yet again, by Whittier College. Despite the deluge of calls from College neighbors and Whittier area religious leaders and concerned citizens objecting to Erotic City 2007, which compelled Whittier College President Sharon Herzberger to ask students to reconsider participating, the sincerity of which request was questioned by whittiergate, and for good cause - Whittier College saved the event in 2007 when Barney Peake negotiated use of the Radisson Hotel when the Lancers couldn't -- because there had been violence and property damage as well as overt sexuality and alcohol and drug problems at the 2006 event Uptown venue -- - and Andre Coleman saved the objectionable event in 2008.
Dean Andre Coleman, whom whittiergate has exposed denying proven academic misconduct at Whittier College, and being part of planting a libelous disinformation article in Quaker Campus, and it seems fairly clear disseminating disinformation generally, in addition to presiding over Whittier College Societies known to be illegally hazing pledges and making life miserable for depledges, both criminal activities, has now, in Whittier College's name, insulted the entire community by falsely claiming that the problem with Erotic City is its name!
Coleman, it seems ever more truth challenged, begins misleading us when he falsely claims that the perceived problems related to Erotic City were "largely related to the name." The problems related to Erotic City, Dean Coleman, are that the event misleads young female students to act worse than prostitutes in public, and male students to see and so treat them as such. When have you ever seen a street whore so immodest that she wore only makeup, her lingerie and heels in public? Is this the way you want your daughter to act in public, to degrade herself in this way, to expose herself to danger in this way? Is this how you want your children to see you years from now? This seems to escape Andre Coleman, who's supposed to be looking after Whittier College student best interests.
"I'm sure if I was back in college I'd love [Erotic City AKA Adam and Eve]. Each generation does their own risque things, and we forget," says Andre Coleman. Coleman can sure pack a lotta BS into just a couple of simple declarative sentences. First, aside from wondering where African-American Andre Coleman went to college and what on Earth he did there, the fact is that Andre Coleman is still back in college, and unfortunately in a position to harm Whittier College students, the College's reputation, and the entire community. No one has forgotten any risque things they've done, but many regret them later, especially if but even if they weren't photographed or videotaped. Erotic City by any name is the same event it has always been, and it has been kept alive by dirty old farts still at Whittier College so long it's now transgenerational. That Andre Coleman sees Erotic City AKA Adam and Eve as so desirable tells us all we need know about Andre Coleman. If Erotic City is now Adam and Eve, Andre Coleman is the Snake in the Garden.
Whittier College's female Societies have made clear, through the kinds of events they stage, what they want and don't want. At one female Society event everyone dresses in all black outfits, at another sheet togas of yore are worn, that is, when female Societies throw parties there is some modesty; if clothing were taken off, the girls would still have on at least their underwear. Female Societies do not normally stage events at which females are expected to completely degrade themselves and accept being completely degraded by males (although female Society initiations and some activities have harmed female students for lifetimes).
Those who have carried on Erotic City over the years have been among the most unsavory males at Whittier College, numerous of them continuing to hang around campus nearing 30 years of age - to continue to prey on the youngest females, who just want to be cool and fit in, to be accepted, and are misled to act like sluts by older Society members, Big Brothers, facilitated by Whittier College, which has basically sold its soul for the money Society member alumni give to the school. It's also difficult to see Andre Coleman as any different from the creepy Big Brothers exposed by this site - except that Dean Coleman, like Campus Safety's John Lewis, speak not just for themselves but for Whittier College.
A female student at Whittier College is many times more likely to be sexually assaulted at this little out of the way school than are coeds at large nationally-ranked university party schools, not for any quirk, but because of people like Dean Andre Coleman, President Sharon Herzberger, and Campus Safety spokesperson John Lewis, the last of whose office claims that over recent years no Whittier College sexual assasult/rape victims, those admitted to by Campus Safety at all, have wanted "police involvement." Such a ridiculous claim would be laughable, but for the fact that students, daughters, sisters, are being sexually assaulted and raped at Whittier College, and the College not only denies its responsibility for the environment facilitating such crimes, when only the College can and must be so, but still worse makes denial its priority, thereby perpetuating the climate such crimes require, and then make sure that the victims are 'persuaded' that they don't want police involvement after being sexually assaulted/raped. The extremely serious problem of sexual assault and rape at Whittier College is created and sustained at Whittier College by the College.
Whittier College President Sharon Herzberger never gave any sign of disapproval of Erotic City, then she was suddenly against it when she was compelled to quickly respond to "a huge rush of calls" just before the 2007 event, and now, in 2008, when she evidently thought no one was still looking, Sharon Herzberger again has nothing to say. Evidently Sharon Herzberger, like Andre Coleman, thinks the Whittier community - the College's neighbors, concerned community members and clergy - are a bunch of imbeciles who can't see through a mere name change. Sharon, and you will see the community agrees, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
Adam and Eve looks like Erotic City, Adam and Eve is degrading and dangerous for the school's youngest female students like Erotic City, Adam and Eve is Erotic City. And no one mischaracterized Erotic City, nor is anyone mischaracterizing Adam and Eve, when it's observed that the event is and has always been a moral outrage and unnecessary danger deserving condemnation and demands for an end to it once and for all; nor is anyone mischaracterizing Sharon Herzberger and Andre Coleman when stating that their facilitation of Erotic City AKA Adam and Eve alone deserves their firing from their positions at Whittier College.
whittiergate's sure the particularly perverse cover name for Erotic City, Adam and Eve, the name of a sleazy lingerie and sex toy shop as well as of the Biblical Adam and Eve, wasn't lost on Coleman & Co., and won't be lost on the Whittier community. Adam and Eve can only be seen as a more or less direct insult to the community at large and clergy in particular, who have cared enough about young female students and this community to object to Erotic City continuing here.
And there is no doubt that the name change from Erotic City to Adam and Eve was contrived by the administration: when it was put to the Lancer Society by Dean Andre Coleman that this event name change would fool the community and the event could go on as usual, "...we agreed with their logic," said Lancer Society spokesman Dan Castillo. Dean Andre Coleman has been charged with making the new Whittier College Societies "product" sell, and that's evidently what he's going to do, no matter who or what is sacrificed in the process. whittiergate will make certain that Andre Coleman's reputation fits his words and actions and their consequences.
The intention in changing the name of Erotic City to Adam and Eve was to deceive the community, and evidently to needlessly insult those who have cared enough to object to the event. Yet who would know of this intention? The Whittier College student newspaper has been taken offline, only its limited circulation print edition is available. In its first issue of the 2007 - 2008 academic year, the paper, Quaker Campus, had the conscience to question the administration about its installation of health and safety and environmental hazard artificial turf on campus, which installation releases lead, carcinogens, and silica dust into the air, and pollutes adjacent soil and groundwater. The administration retaliated, and that was the end of freedom of the press at Whittier College, yet again.
The Whittier College administration is so confident that it has succeeded in mocking the Whittier community that it allowed its student paper to run photos of Erotic City/Adam and Eve 08 in Quaker Campus' October 30, 2008 issue, complete with the names of students shown. Cameras were barred from the event (at least one camera was confiscated on site) in 07 when community pressure caused some security measures to be imposed for the first time, including barring older predatory Society alumni. Older Society members were, however, again being admitted to Erotic City/Adam and Eve, again at the Radisson Hotel, in 2008.
Likewise, many Whittier College administrators, faculty members and staff signed and paid for a misleading full-page anti-Proposition 8 advertisement in Quaker Campus, but not in the Whittier Daily News, much less in the L. A. Times, affecting students but avoiding speaking up to the community at large. Whittier College is less and less a good fit with the Whittier community, whose values the College clearly laughs at, just as they laugh at the values of the Quakers who founded Whittier College. Now you know why the Friends had to withdraw their support from the College they founded - because Whittier College lost its way, and the College has never been more lost than it is today.
The Whittier community's mistake, the same mistake made by Whittier College student parents, is that they've taken Sharon Herzberger's and other Whittier College spokespersons' word to be good, when in fact, indeed, the word of Whittier College administrators is worthless. The Whittier community expressing its concerns about Erotic City compelled the College to go to the trouble to put some event safeguards in place, and later to try duping the community. The Whittier community going to the trouble to show Whittier College and the Radisson Hotel that the morally repugnant and physically dangerous Erotic City event, by any name, and especially by the name Adam and Eve, is incompatible with the values of and unacceptable to this community will succeed in, finally, ending this dreadful event. If Dean Andre Coleman and President Sharon Herzberger think Erotic City AKA Adam and Eve is part of educating young students, then Coleman and Herzberger as well as Whittier College students have a lot to learn...
"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
UPDATE
There was no 2010-2011 Adam & Eve AKA Erotic City event - because the Lancers
(male Lancer Society), (and the Mets (female Metaphonian Society)) were suspended
this year for "sexual harassment, hazing, and alcohol" during their
most recent pledging process (or in Whittierspeak new member education). While
any action at all being taken is at least a step in the right direction, none
of those who willfully committed sex crimes that should've landed the perpetrators
jail time and sex offender registration for the rest of their lives, and more
jail time for breaking anti-hazing laws, and for providing and coercing minors
to consume toxic amounts of alcohol, were held individually accountable, which
is in itself good cause for lawsuits and criminal prosecutions in addition to
the original crimes being prosecuted.
There is such a very, very long road to travel to recreate these societies in
any kind of acceptable form that they should simply be discontinued. Tradition
is great for schools - just so long as a given tradition isn't criminal, or
secretive and so highly potentially criminal, in nature. Whittier's societies
have operated with their own lights and now under this College's administrators,
and they have in neither case distinguished themselves from the local Barrio
Locos, who also jump in their members.
If this society/gang trip is about becoming part of a new family, about long-term
relationships and mutual support, then, to judge by communications to this site
from current as well as former Whittier societies' members, and a due respect
for the Locos, if it's about your new family members covering your back, go
with the Locos.
To make sure that this campus and the larger Whittier community are free of
the Erotic City AKA Adam & Eve event that has deniigrated and endangered
young female students for too many years, students and the larger community
must remain alert for any future attempts to revive this ill-conceived and completely
unacceptable event, and if there is such an attempt, act in concert to end Erotic
City AKA Adam & Eve once and for all.
See more about the Lancer and Metaphonian Societies' suspensions and Whittier
College's secret societies in general on whiittiergate's 'Whittier College Reacts
to whittiergate Spotlighting' and 'Whittier College Societies Endanger Students'
pages...
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