While Saint Xavier busies itself with damage control over a history professor who cannot distinguish between protest and pedagogy, Cornell University’s health service is debating the important question of whether to sell vibrators in its dispensary. “Many students,” a college newspaper reports, “feel it would be helpful for Gannett [health center] to have vibrators available because Cornell is located in Ithaca, not a major city.” Somjen Frazer, Cornell ’03, explained the problem: “At this point, you either go online or go downtown to the sort of scary and not very woman-affirming place sex-shop.” Paraphrasing Ms. Frazer, the paper noted that, “as with anything else they sell, the dispensary will give out educational materials explaining how to properly clean a vibrator that two women are going to share and what exactly vibrators can be used for.” Yes, we can see how important that would be. Most, though not all, of the students quoted about the proposed innovation were enthusiastic. Sara Jacobs, Cornell ’05, confided that “I think one of the most important things is for women to be able to get themselves off. It’s better than going to the sketchy shop downtown where they have to check the batteries for you.” Perhaps Cornell will offer an elective on changing batteries. It seems the least they can do for—let’s see, at last count it was $38,254 all in.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 21 Number 4 , on page 3
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