by a concerned catamount
Discontent has been rampant on Central Campus after an anonymous faculty member erected a sign in the Central Campus Dining Hall stating, “After you finish eating please NO FINGERING; to make room for your friends to dine.” This kind of sex-negative attitude is inexcusable in 2020. Should a student choose to finger their partner consensually after cunnilingus, a student should be granted that right. Not only is this wildly politically incorrect, but a violation of the Free Exercise Clause granted to citizens by our first amendment. This clause protects a citizen’s right to choose to practice vaginal or anal stimulation. While laypeople have been stripped of this right, the common athlete gets to continue to “exercise.” Students report seeing athletes: running, walking, biking, and not wearing masks.
Central Campus dining hall has already been skating on the line of unconstitutionality this semester, with gross inconsistencies in dessert accessibility, asking students to clear their own dishes (they don’t do that in Harris! It’s completely unreasonable to ask adults to sort their trash into three categories– trash, recycling and compost– before putting their dirty dishes on the conveyor belt so an underpaid worker can wash them!), and requiring students to stand in lines for upwards of 15 minutes so that the dining spaces can be washed during a global pandemic. They take our desserts, they make us clear our own plates, they make us wait in lines, and now we can’t even finger our friends in the comfort of the Central Campus dining hall?
For so many students in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the dining hall is the only place they can engage in sexual activities. Students living on campus at the University of Vermont are not allowed to have guests in their dorm rooms, unless they care to face a $250 fine. At this rate, students find themselves faced with the dilemma of $250 dorm room sex, or choosing to just get someone more experienced downtown for the same price. Free pleasure must be attained in common areas such as hallways, communal sinks, elevators, stairways, the COVID testing tunnel, and of course, dining halls. This leaves students with few options, and now with Central limiting the amount of foreplay permitted in the venue, students are having worse sex than ever.
It’s a slippery slope, and UVM must be cognizant of how one injustice leads to another. As Martin Niemoller wrote, “First they came for the sexually active, and I did not speak out– because I was not sexually active.” As politically active students, it’s a Catamount’s duty to keep those in power in line. What’s next? Will students not be allowed to smoke cigarettes in the Davis Center lobby? Will professors not be allowed to have intimate relationships with students? Will the electronics in the back of the bookstore no longer be free when no one is looking? Stay woke UVM. And never stop fingering.
Categories: october 6, 2020, water cooler