“A university should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.”
Benjamin Disraeli said this. This statement sums up what a university is supposed to do, and it is slowly but surely being warped by Yeshiva University. In the past weeks a number of fascinating things happened at Yeshiva University. An article about a Stern girl’s sexual adventurers was published in the Beacon, a YU publication. This of course caused the expected (and typical of YU) uproar. Then, later in the week, an article was published in the Commentator confirming many of the students’ suspicions that YU would at some point in the future begin restricting website access due to a pornographic problem in YU brought to Rabbi Reiss’s attention a few years back by “YU Aveirim,” who claimed it was a wide held problem.
The university was quick to take action and respond to the article in the Beacon. It was too “graphic,” some said. YU quickly stopped funding the newspaper. Something that a lot of people don’t know is that a couple of weeks before this article even appeared, another article was published in the Beacon. This article was an essay, a graphic one at that, about the satisfaction of killing a man. The article vividly describes the murder and the feelings of the murderer. This graphic portrayal was not widely spread, nor were there any attempts to restrict the article or cut funding for the Beacon. Yet, when a much less graphic and explicit article implying a sexual act was written, the whole university gets up in arms. It is a troubling phenomenon that reveals a lot about the Jewish community at YU.
Sex has become taboo. Maybe it is a response to the openness of our liberal society. When we read an article about sex, ideas pop into our heads. Maybe we will do it, maybe we will want to do it. It is clear from the Beacon article that everyone thinks about it. Some students like to watch porn; some of us are even addicted to it. But it is not a university’s right to take action. A university serves its students academically. It is here to teach and educate and create discussion, not suppress. It is not here to restrict our conversations or how we spend our time.
This goes for the Yeshiva aspect as well. The rabbis are here to be role models, like the professors, and to teach Torah. There are boundaries that should not be stepped over. We are all over eighteen and are involved in the real world. We are not in Israel anymore. We are not at home anymore. Eventually, each and every person including the anonymous Aveiri, are going to have to live with the fact that they are living, and in living they must interact with the world around them. If they do not want to interact, then they should move to B’nei Brak and learn in a yeshiva.
Sex and masturbation may or may not be a problem in YU; I would not know and I don’t think those Aveirim can speak for everyone. But the fact is that if the university wants to help the students, then the institution will not overstep its bounds. It will do what it was meant to do, what a university was created for: it will foster education; it will teach and influence through its fields of knowledge. A prominent Yeshiva University Rabbi spoke at seuda shlishit this past week and stated that though the university provides a place for people to deal with these things, the institution as an entity is not Alcoholics Anonymous. It is not a nicotine patch. No, it is a university which prides itself on its elite education, both in secular studies and in limudei kodesh. Let us continue on this path, not on a path of restrictions.