A Good Pace

Dan Savage, MTV, and Rhodes College

A few days ago Dan Savage came for the second time to Rhodes College to come talk about a number issues, involving sexuality, healthy relationships, and a number of things that certainly should be addressed on campus.The first time he came, a year ago, the conversation went really well and many people heard his advice and participated in a constructive conversation.

This time he came, he also came with MTV. A month or so ago, students began seeing flyers about the two coming to campus for a tv show that will be airing a year from now. The show  will talk about relationships and sexual atmosphere on college campuses. The first time I heard about this I was immediately skeptical. Any show that MTV has ever shown in their channel is not a way I want to see the college I go to portrayed. My opinion of MTV is extremely low, their target audience is teenagers while pretending to be targeting people my age so that they can be cool and show kids “this is what its like to be an adult”. I was ready for people to be angry. Our school was going to be in a group that included “the situation,” Bam Margera, and a bunch of people that are 16 and pregnant… Maybe I am being too critical, it’s just my personal opinion that the stuff that is generally on MTV is extremely low.

Anyways the outrage didn’t appear just yet. A group that I help out with on campus is kind of like a student group partnered with planned parenthood and promotes safe sex and lifestyle choices. Anyway, this whole Dan Savage thing was seen as a way to possibly finally have a conversation about good practices on campus. The conversation never came.

This next part of the blog post is taken from different accounts and all involve close friends of mine, this has actually become a slightly polarizing thing on campus.

After the student organization wasn’t able to receive an interview with Dan (he had been meeting with a lot of different students for interviews to be put in the show), one of the groups leaders was able to secure an interview and during the meeting inquired about the actual intentions of this TV show: to have a healthy and open conversation or to make college seem like this wild and scandalous place. She also warned Dan that people might be protesting that the talk he was giving later.

People were protesting because a number of people had claimed to have been asked to lie during the interviews and the questions being asked during the interviews had been very leading to make people sound more scandalous than normal.

During the talk, Dan called the leader of said student organization out in front of the audience and put her on the spot about the issues she had raised. She was caught off guard and after being shown up by the public speaker she and many other members of the organization walked out of the talk to join the protest.

I was at Senior Seminar at the time and when I got out most of the protests had started to die down, but it ranged from chanting, to firing a siren, and trying to open a window to get into the auditorium, which almost turned into an accident that could have hurt the person on the inside trying to close it. 

The disruptiveness, and almost accident (or “attack”) with the window made people on the inside outraged too, especially after Mr. Savage played the middle ground card, even though it was clear that the two groups were going against each other. 

Anyways afterwards both groups were mad at each other and the only real solution is to wait and see what damage is done in a year and a half from now or get it pulled which is apparently what the administration is trying to do.

I tried to stay objective and I just thought it was interesting and annoying how this all played out. I was on the side of the protestors mainly because the student body wasn’t consulted about MTV coming to campus, the true intentions and dishonesty about the nature of this tv show are suspicious, and because of some of the stories i have heard about the interviews. This blog post was not meant to start the conversation and arguing over again, just to record it down and also hear the web’s thoughts. If anyone reads this and goes to another school that Dan Savage and MTV went to, I’d like to hear about your experience there and know if any events similar or completely different occurred.