Student government reps at the elite Catholic University of America earlier this month voted to approve a resolution that would ban the “top 200” online porn sites from the campus wifi, calling porn “a grave offense against chastity” that also causes “grave injury" to the “dignity” of performers. All this is according to the resolution posted on Twitter by University professor C.C. Pecknold, who said he was “so proud” of the students who initiated the resolution, adding that they “stand fast for dignity, hope and virtue.”
While the Catholic University administration has not said whether it will take steps to block the porn sites from the school’s wifi system, a University spokesperson called it “difficult to ignore the firm stance against pornography made by our student body,” according to The College Fix.
The resolution comes after a group of 80 male students at Notre Dame University, also a Catholic school, called on the administration there to ban porn from campus wifi networks—even though a survey showed the about 60 perecnt pf Notre Dame men actively watch porn, as AVN.com reported.
Students at Catholic Georgetown University, as well as several secular Ivy League schools, were also developing movements to ban online porn on their campuses as well, according to a December report by The Daily Beast.
Not every Catholic University student was on board with the porn ban, however.
“Regardless of one’s opinion on the morality of pornography, this ban is an infringement on the freedom of speech and expression of students,” said first-year politics and Islamic studies major Rachel Lucas, quoted by the campus newspaper The Tower. “This censorship foreshadows a slippery slope in which the university may begin to ban more internet content depending on their opinion of the subject.”
But senior Joseph Enzler, one of the originators of the porn ban resolution, said that anyone who comes to Catholic University expecting to view porn on the campus wifi should “check your values,” adding “that’s the day the Church dies.”
Another sponsor of the resolution, student government Senator Gerard McNair-Lewis, took a somewhat sunnier approach to imposing online censorship, saying, “This is not rooted in our hatred for pornography, it is rooted in our love for our fellow students.”
Catholic University has no rule preventing students from viewing porn, and the ban—at least initially—would apply only to the school’s internal wifi network, The Tower reported.
Photo By Farragutful/Wikimedia Commons
