To the Editor:
On Saturday afternoon, Kendrick Lamar stood on the Main Green and sang that he can get past any emotional challenge so long as he has access to expensive alcohol and female sexual partners, while hundreds of Brown students sang along in approval. The night before, Big Freedia impressed the cheering crowd with endless references to female genitalia, alcohol and physical abuse. Meanwhile, two female dancers kept their backs to the audience so that only their “booties” were visible for most of the act. These were just a few examples of the many times the performances at this year’s Spring Weekend advanced the notion that women are primarily valuable as sexual objects. Though music like this is rightfully guarded by First Amendment protections, we question its role on Brown’s campus in the prime communal social event of the year. Normally, we have the choice to shut off the radio or step away from a concert if we find misogynistic lyrics offensive. But what’s particularly troubling about this situation is that our Student Activities Fund — money all undergraduate students are expected to pay alongside tuition bills — helped to subsidize these lyrics, and each one of us was obliged to financially support music that dehumanized and devalued the women around us. In October 2012, the Undergraduate Finance Board released its budget predictions for this year, noting that it would spend $180,000, on Spring Weekend. It seems to us that our Student Activities Fund could be better spent on musical acts or other social events that don’t minimize women or perpetuate a culture that dismisses their contributions as anything besides vehicles for sexual pleasure. Next year, we encourage our student body to think more critically about the type of messages we’d like to broadcast during the only event of the year that brings together so much of our campus and about the ways we spend our community’s money. We’d like to think we could expect more.
Sarah Forman ’13, Chelsea Feuchs ’14 and Nasim Azigolshani ’14
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