In the new title-taking wave that is sweeping campus campaigns and organizations, there is a new player that hopes to re-imagine itself in a way that another campaign has already imagined itself: the Green Dot Program.
Sexual Misconduct Coordinator Barbarella Mixwell announced on Tuesday, March 26 that the Green Dot Program would no longer be called as such at the start of the 2013-2014 academic year. Instead, it will adopt the name of the campaign to promote civil rights education in local elementary schools: Whitman Teaches the Movement.
“Instead of having the ambiguous title of ‘Green Dot,’ which takes a lengthy explanation of why green dots have anything to do with sexual misconduct, we’re going for something more visceral entirely,” said Mixwell. “Under the new banner of ‘Whitman Teaches the Movement,’ we want to promote safe sex by making sure people know how the sex ‘moves’ actually work.”
Over spring break, a joint effort was made by members of the Pioneer‘s Sexual Misconduct Article Writing Squad (which actually just means Rachel Alexander) and Mixwell to produce a 120-student survey that was totally representative of the views and ideas of the entire student body. The results were staggering: Instead of pointing toward sexual malignancy, it mostly hinted at complete sexual ignorance.
“Wait, the clitoris is a sex thing?” said one junior male in response to one of the survey questions. “I was convinced that it was just one of the characters from that one Shakespeare play. Or maybe that was Cleopatra. I can’t remember.”
Another student’s views on sex and women seemed entirely founded on male comedy routines and YouTube videos.
“I like women. I like the concept of a woman. I like to take that concept and reduce it to an object. I like to take those objects and put ’em in my videos and have them shake they jiggly bits so they looks like hoes,” said one male first-year who was clearly quoting the satirical rap song “Fuck Shit Stack” by comedian-musician Reggie Watts with utmost seriousness.
This trend seems to take root mostly on the male end of campus. The women in the survey seemed to have it all mostly together, except for things they probably just didn’t want to know about balls.
“I mean, I don’t want to know why they’re just so shrivelly and hairy and sometimes lopsided and sweaty and gross. I don’t think that’s a crime,” said one sophomore female in the survey. This sentiment was echoed 27 times.
In this new “Whitman Teaches the Movement” campaign, Mixwell plans on combatting the sexual ignorance that leads to sexual misconduct by using the awe-inspiring power of metaphor.
“Imagine a baby who has one of those toys where certain shaped blocks go into certain slots,” said Mixwell. “The stupid, uninformed baby will try to put the triangle block into the square slot, and no matter how hard it tries it just isn’t going to work as the baby planned.”
This contrasts with the figure she called the “smart baby.”
“The smart baby will take the care and finesse of taking the crescent block and gently and slowly pushing it into the correct crescent-shaped slot, which is rewarding for everyone.”
When asked why she chose babies, Mixwell tied the metaphor back to the image of movement.
“Babies spend two years trying to master basic human locomotion. I want to inspire students to take the same amount of time and effort to learning a completely different movement: the movements of romance and sexual intercourse,” she said.
She then began personifying the blocks and slots as males and females through the symbolism of penes (yes, folks, that’s the proper Latin plural form of penis) and vaginas.
“When a man tries too hard to put his block into a woman’s slot, the result is aggressive behavior of the man on a quest to fulfill his sexual desires. Even if it is the wrong slot, he can keep forcing the block, which can leave the slot and woman feeling hurt, or even worse, broken and scarred for life.”
And then Mixwell drove the nail in the coffin as she finished off the lecture with a clear message of shame.
“I mean, come on. If a 15-month-old baby can figure this shit out, why can’t a group of college students? Get your shit together. You’re at Whitman fucking College,” she said.
Senior sociology major Catherine Mattress, who has spent her final year at Whitman studying the efficacies of different approaches to college sex education and sexual conduct programs, backs this measure for change wholeheartedly.
“I think the time is right for change, and we need to take the imagery back to its core: the ‘movement’ itself,” she said.
Mattress, whose last name partly inspired her work on sexual conduct, especially agreed with the apt baby and block-slot metaphor, which she believes drunk college students can relate to.
“Babies and drunk college students are a lot alike: They babble a lot, they stumble when they try to walk, they make weird gyrating motions and they puke all over themselves,” she said. “Hopefully, the baby will be something that drunk students can truly relate to instead of colored dots on a map.”
The general public seems to be behind the sea-change that will go into full force this fall. Especially closeted virgins.
“I could stand to learn about how the movement of sex works with this new program,” said now-uncloseted virgin senior Buster Hyman. “That way down the road I won’t attempt to drunkenly have my way with a woman because of my own sexual insecurities which are rooted in my lack of knowledge and experience.”
Still, there will be great lament over the loss of the Green Dot Program, but mostly because now there won’t be any more context to green dot and red dot jokes in male first-year sections.
“It would always be funny when one guy would jokingly grope another guy’s pecs and someone in the room would be like ‘red dot!'” said senior math major Mike Hawk. “Those were good times. Without those jokes, though, I might not have even remembered the [Green Dot Program] at all.”
If first-year sex jokes are the legacy of the Green Dot Program, then maybe the name change is the right thing to do. Even if it was stolen, it was stolen for the sake of safe sex.
*** “Whitman Teaches the Movement” was unavailable for comment, because they are very busy assessing their options as to what name they are going to filch from another campaign.
