Posted on 08/25/2015 4:50:29 PM PDT by markomalley
Some members of the Duke University freshman class have refused to read Fun Home, a graphic novel depicting a young girls emergence as a lesbian accompanied by several sexually explicit drawings. School officials selected the book as required freshman summer reading.
Some Duke students dont agree with the moral position advanced by the graphic novels author, Allison Bechdel.
Duke did not seem to have people like me in mind, incoming Duke freshman Brian Grasso told The Chronicle, the schools student newspaper. It was like Duke didnt know I existed, which surprises me.
Grasso is credited with starting the movement against the required book by utilizing the Duke Class of 2019 Facebook group.
The freshman objected to the books support and depiction of homosexual behavior, saying in his Facebook post that he felt he would have to compromise [his] personal Christian moral beliefs to read it.
Although hes been the subject of a social media firestorm and many attacks via private messages on his Facebook page, Grasso told The Daily Caller in an email that he doesnt regret his refusal, and has since published an opinion article in The Washington Post explaining in detail why he will not read the book.
After his post, other students quickly began showing support for Grasso. They posted similar moral objections to the summer reading requirement.
I thought to myself, what kind of school am I going to?' student Elizabeth Snyder-Mounts said in a comment on the Facebook post.
The nature of Fun Home means that content that I might have consented to read in print now violates my conscience due to its pornographic nature, Jeffrey Wubbenhorst, another freshman at Duke, added in an email to The Chronicle.
Bechdels graphic novel is focused on her familys dysfunction. The adult comic book underscores the protagonists suicidal father and her own struggle with lesbianism.
Fun Home has been popular with college administrators in recent years and has been the center of controversy on campuses previously. At the College of Charleston, for example, officials spent around $39,000 buying up copies of the book to assign to 4,000 or so incoming 2013 freshmen students for required summer reading.
Some students at the taxpayer-funded South Carolina school refused to read the novel on moral grounds, citing pornographic scenes throughout the book. A group associated with the Family Research Council called for its removal from the summer reading list. The South Carolina House of Representatives later cut College of Charlestons funding by $52,000, the cost of the books selection for summer reading.
Michael Schoenfeld, vice president of public affairs and governmental regulations at Duke, told CNN that school officials chose Fun Home because it is a unique and moving book that transcends genres and explores issues that students are likely to confront.
Sherry Zhang, a member of the book selection committee and co-chair of the first-year advisory counselor board, told The Chronicle that students are not required to read the summer reading assignment.
Since Monday morning, the Duke Fun Home rebellion has been trending on Facebook. More than 110,000 users have discussed the kerfuffle.
Jordan Hale, head of the book selection committee at Duke, did not return The Daily Callers request for comment.
explores issues that students are likely to confront.
So the college thinks large numbers of student are going to have to confront choosing to be lesbians? What the heck is wrong with these people?
The comic book is about a lesbian from a dysfunctional family. Well, at least it got that part right. How else do they think homosexuals are made?
I hope so, I have run into more than one perverse professor who forces their classes to focus on the prof’s sexual proclivities.
Sherry Zhang says it’s not required reading.
Duke has become very mean and radical. Never forget what they did to the Lax team.
He said he would have read it except for the pictures. I don’t know if the book had parts in it that were sexual, but I have a pretty darn good imagination, Barney, and I don’t need pictures.
In fact, when you see a woman reading one of those thick romance novels, no pictures, it probably has porn in it. I started one once and had to quit. Now I watch Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone movies. Boom! Never liked soaps, either. Love NCIS.
If you were to say things of the books subject matter to a fellow student you would be accused of sexual harassment.Why arearen’t the people making kids read this charged with sexual harassment?
God bless these young people. Gives me hope.
Yeah, I know.
The universities in the South haven’t escaped tenured radicals any more then the Northern ones.
And these are the people who have hardcore beliefs that they have to change the South completely, so they justify social conditioning. Of the Leftist kind...
&&&&
Well, that is the plan....
Disgusting.
Good for the students. I wouldn’t bother reading that crap either. And while I’m reminded of it, I see Netflix setup a new category - LGBT films. Its disgusting. I accidentally watched one of their movies tagged as such without realizing it one night ( it was about a daughter looking for her mother that she had never met) and all of a sudden there’s a woman going gay on another woman. It was disgusting. They took what would have made a good movie and turned it into trash by sexualizing it. Netflix needs to rethink this bad move.
I, too, would like to see them not promoting sodomy.
Having said that, if they're going to have that kind of flick available, I am actually glad that they have the tag. I would prefer to have it clearly identified so that I can avoid it.
Even better, google Frank Lombard and Duke. 100x worse than Duke Lacrosse and buried much deeper.
I think it's high time to shut off all federal tuition assistance programs and send 2/3 of these spoiled brats out into the orchards to pick peaches.
That’s okay. Carry on, Patriot.
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