This is from a college newspaper—sorry, there is absolutely no link to it anywhere, at least not yet.
Here is the rundown:
Student is a devout Mormon. Student signs up for an English class, then discovers that Prof is showing some films that have PG-13 or R ratings. These go against the student’s personal standards and values, and she asks for alternate assignments. Prof refuses since the subject matter of said films goes with the written material/themes being studied and since academic freedom applies. Also, it is a public school, not private.
Student takes case to dept. head, who supports Prof. based on the same principles just mentioned. DH remarked that it was up to the prof as to whether or not she wanted to accommodate the student but she is not required to do so. Prof chose not to.
Student then takes case to division dean, who is very kind but says the same things DH said and added that prof is not being unreasonable. It would be different if the prof was expecting people to watch porn, but this is not the case.
Dean adds that students must expect to be exposed to material that they may not necessarily like but that they can learn about different perspectives, do some analyzing, then figure out why they do or do not agree.
Student decides to drop class and wonders how anyone expects her to get through college if she keeps having to drop because she wants to uphold her standards.
My response to all this:
Student needs to deal. She will not get through college if she keep dropping every time a prof shows a movie or assigns a story she does not like, and I can guarantee you that this will be the case with most profs, at least in English, and on most campuses.
Student does not seem to understand that all PG-13 and R movies are not created equal. **The King's Speech** and **The Passion of The Christ** both have R ratings, but for very different reasons.
Student needs to realilze that films are chosen based on themes and content, not based on ratings.
I've shown R-rated films in class many times over the years and never heard anyone complain. Hell, the students I had in a university class voted to see **A Clockwork Orange** after we read the novel. Nobody griped and nobody walked out even though I had said it was okay if they couldn't take it.
The student did not file a grievance AFAIK since what happened is not actually grievable unless she can prove religious discrimination.
I’ll refrain from making general statements about Mormons and just agree that the student needs to suck it up or go back home and be a slug. Fuck her and the horse she rode in on.
She may find she would be happier at BYU or a school like that. She has the right to select her classes based on her beliefs, but the school has the right expose her to ideas that she may not like.
Sucks that she had to drop the class 'cause of her religious views. Without knowing the details it’s hard to really judge, since you don’t know if there was a reasonable and easy-to-implement alternative instead. Watching movies in English class strikes me as pretty stupid 'cause English is about literature and films aren’t literature. Guess you gotta attract people somehow.
I’m pretty sure ‘thou shalt not watch R-Rated movies’ is not actually in the Book of Mormon.
Here’s a list of movies shown recently at BYU’s student theater. Theres a decent number of R-rated movies on there. So watching such movies may be against Students personal values, but they don’t appear to be any religious rule against her doing so.
I’m an engineer and biochemist, so you could reasonably argue that I don’t know what I’m talking about, but wouldn’t it be fair to say that English class is the study of the use of English as a way of expression, not necessarily only in literature. Besides, who defines what is or isn’t literature? Shakespeare wrote plays - essentially movies for the technology of the times - and that gets studied in English classes all the time. Why is Shakespeare literature but not, say, Quentin Tarantino (I don’t actually want to discuss this here, but I’m just using it to make a point!)
If school was all about what the students wanted to study, we wouldn’t get much done in class. It’s not the school’s responsibility to shelter the students - and I actually think the role of a college/university is the opposite; the expose students to all kinds of new things. The problem in the OP is the student’s problem, and not the school’s to solve. If she doesn’t want to be there, she doesn’t have to.
We were never shown films in any of my college English classes and the only potentially offensive material I was exposed to was Candide. The student should speak to the professors and look over the course curriculum before enrolling.
The artistic experience of film is expressed through words, visuals, sounds, music and acting. The artistic experience of literature is words alone. It’s like playing through Halo to experience 21st Century orchestral arrangements. Maybe it is there, but it’s lost in the noise. At least, that’s how I see it.
In college I was a film student. We did watch porn. I’ve read Lolita in a college English class. That’s what happens in college.
The idea behind college is to be broadening. It SHOULD come with a sticker that says “we will challenge you, sometimes you’ll be offended - and that’s a GOOD thing - that’s what college is for.”
(And a number of Film courses were co-offered by the English department. Or the Romance Languages Department. Apparently, some professors have broad interpretations of their fields.)
I took quite a few literature classes in college where we watched movie interpretations of certain texts and discussed how much we agreed/disagreed with the director’s reading of the book. Sounds legitimate to me.
If she has such strict standards about what she’s willing to watch or read, she should check in advance with professors before signing up for their classes. Expecting the professor to create an alternate set of assignments to accommodate her delicate sensibilities is ridiculous.