KU Sexuality Class Professor Speaks Out - Finds Experience 'Frightening, Hurtful'

thekansascitychannel.com ^

[chance33_98]

KU Sexuality Class Professor Speaks Out

Dailey Finds Experience 'Frightening, Hurtful'

POSTED: 11:15 a.m. CDT June 2, 2003 UPDATED: 11:38 a.m. CDT June 2, 2003

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- University of Kansas professor Dennis Dailey said he was hurt and frightened by a controversy that flared this semester over the human sexuality class he teaches.

Dailey said his "Human Sexuality in Everyday Life" class is designed to help his students end up in healthy relationships.

"Probably 40 to 50 percent of the students in my class are the products of failed relationships," Dailey said. "They've grown up seeing their parents quarrel over issues that are often sexual in nature."

"So when they get to my class, they listen up because their expectations are that they're likely to repeat their parents' relationships. They'd like not to do that -- I'd like them not to do that."

But Dailey spent much of last semester listening to State Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, charge that he sexually harassed female students in the class, used "street language" and showed clinical videos that would be obscene under Kansas law. She also accused Dailey of saying there is nothing wrong with pedophilia.

And after Wagle appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor" to discuss the class, commentator Bill O'Reilly said Dailey was obviously a pedophile.

Wagle's accusations were based on information from her legislative intern, Jessica Zahn, a senior who took Dailey's class.

Until now, Dailey has not said much about Wagle, Zahn and the controversy surrounding the class.

Dailey explained: "My brother, who's a professional skin diver, taught me long ago: 'If the sharks are feeding, you don't go swimming."'

But that has changed, now that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius declined to veto a budget provision inserted by Wagle that ordered state universities to adopt policies on showing videos depicting sex acts, talking about pedophilia and protecting students from sexual harassment.

He's disappointed in Sebelius, who vetoed an earlier Wagle amendment that would have wiped out the School of Social Welfare's $3.1 million budget if Dailey kept showing videos that Wagle called pornographic.

But Sebelius said last month that the provision she declined to veto would have almost no effect on the university.

"She's right, the content of the proviso is zip," Dailey said. "But the symbolism is dramatic. Signing it into law gives credibility to the actions she originally took offense to. She can't have it both ways."

Not surprisingly, he's disgusted with Wagle's tactics.

"The two words I most often use to describe this experience are 'frightening' and 'hurtful,"' he said.

He said Wagle's tactics remind him of the tactics used in the 1950s by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who launched a campaign to seek out communists he said had infiltrated the U.S. government.

"The bullying, the red herrings, the whole are-you-still-beating-your-wife? approach -- that's McCarthyism," he said. "I find it truly amazing that the huge weight of evidence that's to the contrary of what she's saying has had absolutely no impact on her thinking."

A recent investigation by David Shulenburger, Kansas provost and executive vice chancellor, found Wagle's allegations "do not have merit."

Wagle responded that the investigation was a "whitewash." And she defended her actions.

"What the professor is doing is not allowed in the public workplace," Wagle said.

She also said that many people have thanked her for her efforts against the class.

"I think by raising people's awareness, I've served a good cause," she said.

Especially hurtful, Dailey said, was O'Reilly's suggestion that he was a pedophile.

"That was particularly disturbing," Dailey said. "Not only was that a gross distortion of the content covered in that particular class -- it was a conscious manipulation of the language for mean-spirited purposes. There's no way anyone can defend themselves against something like that."

Dailey, 64, joined the School of Social Welfare faculty in 1969. He's taught courses on human sexuality since 1973. Now in semi-retirement, Dailey said he will teach the course next fall, but he's undecided whether he'll teach it in the spring.

He also said he would not change the course's content or his teaching style.

"I will teach that class exactly as I always have," he said. "To do otherwise would be a betrayal to both the students and to my philosophy."

[StupidQuestions]

So now we have a new law that orders state universities to adopt policies on showing videos depicting sex acts, talking about pedophilia and protecting students from sexual harassment. But this law is symbolism?

Do we have to enact a new law every time we encounter something stupid? This will just clutter the law books, give lawyers something new to argue about, and achieve nothing.

[Richard Kimball]

Probably 40 to 50 percent of the students in my class are the products of failed relationships," Dailey said. "They've grown up seeing their parents quarrel over issues that are often sexual in nature.

Dailey, 64, joined the School of Social Welfare faculty in 1969. He's taught courses on human sexuality since 1973.

Let's see now. Wouldn't that mean that most of the students in his class are now the children of parents who took his class? Seems to me the whole country started getting divorced about the time these leftists started teaching these classes on campus.

[sinkspur]

If O'Reilley claims someone is a pedophile, it must be true! That know-it-all is nauseating.

Actually, O'Reilly has never had to retract a story in the seven years he's been on FOX.

So, if he claims it, it's likely true.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

What about his characterization about the prom in GA, he kept insinuating that the "white only" prom was sponsored by the school?

I often catch him, not out-right lying about the facts, but brushing over things so much for brevity, that he doesn't actually delve into the issue enough to be able to form an educated opinion. (Then again, I don't listen to his radio program, where he can spend more time on the topics.)

[sinkspur]

What about his characterization about the prom in GA, he kept insinuating that the "white only" prom was sponsored by the school?

I don't recall O'Reilly saying that; he just jumped on the administration and the governor for staying silent.

That wasn't one of his stronger causes, IMO. However, he doesn't state things as facts that aren't.

I like O'Reilly. I don't always agree with him, but I like his gutsiness and edge-of-the-envelope thinking.

[Risa]

"college professors, who are themselves eternal teenagers .."

I think college professors should be forced into the real world of working for a living for at least ten years before they begin teaching. Then they should be forced back out for a year or two every four years after that. Perhaps such an experience would jolt them out of their far left Utopianism.

risa

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Does he have proof that this man is a pedophile?

And, how does going after the governor and administration reconcile the fact that it was not a school-sponsored prom? What could the administration or the governor have done about it? Is his outraged based on fact... or emotion?

[ChemistCat]

college professors should be forced into the real world of working for a living

Please add "Liberal arts" to the front of that. My chem profs work so hard, teaching, and in the lab, and they make real contributions to humanity. I've met some good profs in every discipline, for that matter. They don't all have their heads in the clouds. You tend to hear only about the most outrageous of them. RAT Patrol, if that's true he should be in jail, not teaching. I agree. I just want evidence. This is a reputation-destroyer of a charge, and it has to be right on.

[RLK]

I've often believed a student should be required to serve two years in the army or marines before being admitted to graduate school. I would not hire anyone as a professor who had not seen full time military service.

[rwfromkansas]

Not all college professors. I know some great ones that are very professional.

[Risa]

>>Please add "Liberal arts" to the front of that. My chem profs work so hard, teaching, and in the lab, and they make real contributions to humanity. I've met some good profs in every discipline, for that matter. They don't all have their heads in the clouds. You tend to hear only about the most outrageous of them. RAT Patrol, if that's true he should be in jail, not teaching. I agree. I just want evidence. This is a reputation-destroyer of a charge, and it has to be right on.<<

I agree with you entirely.

I am an idiot for making an irresponsible statement like that, and I apologize.

I, too, have known many university professors in the sciences and engineering (as well as other fields) who work day, night, and week-ends to keep abreast of scholarly material for their courses, to continually improve their teaching, and to make valuable contributions to their discipline and to society, too.

When I made my statement, I had in mind the many young people, both liberal- and conservative-minded, who have expressed to me their frustration with the highly- politicized nature of their economics, business, literature, and other humanities courses. (In fact, at many universities, the field of literature has been entirely usurped by multiculturalist, postmodern politics). As I am sure you know, astute students must be continually on guard to see beneath the narrow-minded politics, so they might extract something meaningful from the course, and they must express the professor's view when writing or testing, too.

Not all universities or professors have fallen prey to the fad of politics at the expense of scholarship, so qualifying my statement with 'liberal arts' would be unfair, too. (thanks for making me see this.)

What impresses me is how sophisticated are young people in their thinking today. I don't know if my friends and I would have recognized that we were being subjected to our mentor's high-minded politics rather than scholarship back in the late 1970s. I do believe, however, that scholarship will improve when many of today's young thinkers replace those people who are still acting out their adolescent 1960's radicalism within the University of today.

Thanks for your comment, ChemistCat. I'll be more careful about what I write.