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Post Valentine鈥檚 Day Wrap-Up: Gettysburg Still Outlawing Hugs
One week ago tonight, the nation鈥檚 restaurants, florists, and candy stores were overrun by citizens paying fealty to a beloved annual ritual: Valentine鈥檚 Day. Doubtless you know the drill: couples (established, would-be, erstwhile, and even those holdouts still insisting that they鈥檙e 鈥渏ust friends鈥) circle February 14th as a particularly appropriate opportunity to demonstrate their affection for one another. As a result, all of America celebrates and swoons en masse.
That is, all of America except for one small isle of awkwardness and absurdity: the campus of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.
You see, despite 果冻传媒app官方鈥檚 many reproaches, Gettysburg College still insists on enforcing a ludicrous sexual misconduct policy. How bad is it? Well, the policy is so overbroad that it regards 鈥渂rushing, touching, grabbing, pinching, patting, hugging, and kissing鈥 as sexual interaction, and it defines consent as 鈥渢he act of willingly and verbally agreeing (for example, by stating 鈥榶es鈥) to engage in specific sexual conduct. If either person at any point in a sexual encounter does not give continuing and active consent, all sexual contact must cease, even if consent was given earlier.鈥
As FIREhas pointed out repeatedly, Gettysburg鈥檚 incredibly broad policy has the effect of equating every Valentine鈥檚 Day hug initiated and continued without preliminary and continuous consent to a serious sexual assault, like rape. As Greg pointed out in a column for the California Daily Journal last summer:
This rule effectively makes every student鈥攎an, woman, married or single鈥攇uilty of sexual misconduct. Does anyone get verbal consent to hug their friends and then continue to ask for it the entire hug? Should every time you tap someone on the shoulder be a violation of a university policy? Gettysburg鈥檚 rule does not reflect reality, and so it criminalizes perfectly normal intimate and even merely affectionate interaction.
We at FIREcan only imagine the intensely uncomfortable and thoroughly unromantic Valentine鈥檚 Day students at Gettysburg College must have had. That is, if they abided by their school鈥檚 ridiculous rules. And if they didn鈥檛, why does Gettysburg insist on keeping a rule on the books that it knows it can鈥檛 really enforce?
In the name of sweethearts everywhere, FIREhasn鈥檛 forgotten about the absurdities of Gettysburg鈥檚 policy.
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