This is funny (with my comments):
College Promises To Punish Students Who Heckled Mandatory Play
A liberal arts college in North Carolina is pledging to identify and potentially punish students who heckled a play about sexual assault the college forced them to attend.“It Stops Here,” an original play produced by students at Greensboro College, was first performed last Wednesday before a crowd of students, but the performance didn’t go as planned. According to people at the play, members of the audience frequently heckled the cast and shouted sexually explicit remarks.They no doubt learned the sexually explicit remarks in their Queer and Gender Studies classes .
“Many of the boys started calling out ‘She wanted it, it’s not rape,’ and making masturbation noises,” stage manager Claire Sellers told a local news station. Sellers said the remarks were so excessive that cast members “became physically ill and vomited after the show because they were so vulgar.”They should have people heckle the rehearsals, to get the cast used to it.
Sellers also criticized school faculty members, saying some were near the hecklers but did nothing to stop them.The students were seated in Sanctuary Rows, so they were legally immune from the rules.
Notably, though, the hecklers do not appear to have been invading the performance to disrupt it. Rather, attendance at the play was mandatory for all incoming freshmen at Greensboro, as well as for some older student-athletes who were required to attend by coaches.
One of the play’s performers, Emily Parker, told theater blogger and professor Howard Sherman that the attendees were apparently unhappy about being forced to see the play.It actually sounds rather entertaining.
“A particular group of boys was talking rudely,” said Parker. “They were talking loudly about how they didn’t want to be there and how they thought he [the male actor] was gay. Typical teenage boy stuff. ‘He’s so gay’.What's wrong with being gay? It was a compliment.
”Greensboro has responded firmly, not only condemning the playgoers’ heckling but promising to punish it. Severely, if necessary...The worst punishment they could impose would to make the audience see it again.
The students could defend themselves in a disciplinary hearing by saying that they thought the actors were conservative speakers invited to speak on campus. No one ever gets punished for disrupting them.
The college says it has launched an investigation under Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in education.“Under our new Sexual Misconduct policy, the comments that have been reported qualify as sexual harassment,” said college president Lawrence Czarda in a campuswide email. “The college is pursuing a formal complaint of sexual misconduct against the students and is working to identify them. Upon results of the investigation, those found responsible will face disciplinary consequences.” What sort of consequences the students could face is unclear, but the school’s penalties for sexual harassment go all the way up to expulsion."
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