A poster designed for the on-going event Sexploration, put on by the Sexual Awareness Center was changed this quarter after a member from the Associated Students (AS) Board of Directors expressed concern about the event slogan, “Go Deeper,” which was printed on the poster.

“I don’t feel this is a censorship issue because no one specifically said we couldn’t use the phrase,” said J. Adam Brinson, graphic design coordinator for the Publicity Center. “ But it is disappointing that a really innocuous phrase would have to get leadership involved.”

Western senior Glenn Newcomer, a previous graphic designer for the Publicity Center, designed a poster used to promote last year’s Sexploration, Brinson said. The name and the slogan came from the coordinators of the Sexual Awareness Center. Brinson said he was assigned to redesign and revamp last year’s poster into something new for this year's event.

Brinson submitted his design for print on Feb. 2 and received a message from Grace Wischerth, assistant coordinator for the Sexual Awareness Center, informing him of the decision to remove “Go Deeper” from the poster.

AS Vice President of Business and Operations Virgilio Cintron said he heard other board members and students express concern about the phrase on the poster and decided to voice his concerns about the poster to the center.

Sexploration is an event that is supposed to be inclusive in its nature, Cintron said. He said he felt if the event is intended to provide a comfortable environment to discuss sexuality, the poster should reflect that outlook.

Cintron voiced his concerns about the poster to Western senior and Resource Outreach Program director, Casey D. Hall, who then relayed those concerns to Wischerth.

Cintron said he had to consider the management side of the issue. The AS, an organization that represents students on campus, approved the event, as it was something for people who are very comfortable, very uncomfortable or indifferent with their sexuality.

With a large lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community on campus, the phrase could be interpreted as too heterosexual in nature and it could upset students who do not identify themselves as heterosexual, he said.

“[The Sexual Awareness Center] had some concerns already before anybody from the board had come to us,” Wischerth said. “Our concerns were different, but still important enough for us to decide to remove the phrase from the poster.”

The AS board, as a whole, never made a motion for a new poster to be made, AS Vice President of Activities Matt Jarrell said. There was never an official meeting to dispute a specific change or discuss what the poster should say. Cintron’s concerns were more of a strong encouragement to remove the slogan, he said.

Jarrell said while he felt the phrase was humorous and a good way to get attention, he supports any decision to make a more welcoming environment for all students.

“The poster was intended to push people a little. I think it is healthy to push people past their comfort zone to help them open up,” Wischerth said. “But there is a fine line because too much pushing leads to regression. Then people back away even further from a comfort zone. That phrase was on that [fine] line.”

The Sexual Awareness Center’s concerns with the phrase “Go Deeper,” had more to do with personal connotations than with the slogan possibly not including certain groups of students on campus, Wischerth said.

“Go Deeper” in a simple form, is a command, and Wischerth she said she was concerned it could be a trigger for certain students who have a past with rape or violent sexual situations.

Wischerth said the idea of inclusiveness had not specifically occurred to her until Cintron first voiced his concerns. She said she thinks “Go Deeper” does express a sense of heteronormativity, a term describing the view that heterosexuality as the normal sexual orientation, but it was not the main reason for removing the slogan.

“Once I thought about heteronormativity I realized it was sort of heteronormative of us to assume that ‘Go Deeper’ is only aligned with heterosexual couples,” Wischerth said. “The term can be applied all over the board if you think about it.”

In the end, the Sexual Awareness Center decided to change the poster because it wanted to keep a sense of security since the center’s job is to advocate a sense of comfort with sexuality and issues surrounding it, Wischerth said.

Brinson said he has always enjoyed pushing the envelope and likes that, in his mind, Western, for the most part, has let its students and employees have some freedom in their creativity. He said he would like to know the extent of the offense and what sort of complaints were made since this is not the first time he has heard of posters being changed due to concerns from administration.

Last year, the Viking Union Gallery hosted a show titled “Fuck it,” where artists submitted unsuccessful work and projects, Brinson said. AS Productions, which controls the Viking Union Gallery, had discussed how publicity would work with the event and decided to instead use the phrase “F*ck It.” Before the poster design for the show went to print, the phrase was changed a second time to “Eff It,” Brinson said.

“I didn’t think that ‘Eff It’ had the same ring to it,” Brinson said. “I understood the first change with the asterisk because they wouldn’t want to display such an explicit word all over campus, but the second change changed the meaning of [the show] for me.”

Wischerth said she does not see poster censorship becoming a problem, but said it is important to understand that a university and its affiliates have codes to follow, which are made to benefit the students. Sometimes those codes are more business minded than student minded, she said.

“I liked the multi-faceted use of the phrase ‘Go Deeper,’" Wischerth said. “It was casual enough yet it got people’s attention. I don’t see it as a big deal that we had to change it, it just made us even more aware of what were putting out there.”

Brinson said he hopes a balance between making sure something does not offend anyone and giving people the freedom to be clever and edgy can be found.

Share this article:
                                   

Be first to comment on this article

Only registered users can post comments.
Please login or register.