A
clear-eyed critique of collegiate jurisprudence, as the process of
administering student protests and sexual-assault complaints rolls
along a Möbius strip of shifting legality.
The
management of sexuality has been sewn into the campus. Sex has its
own administrative unit. It is a bureaucratic progression.
—from
Campus Sex,
Campus Security
The
psychic life of the university campus is ugly. The idyllic green quad
is framed by paranoid cops and an anxious risk-management team. A
student is beaten, another is soaked with pepper spray. A professor
is thrown to the ground and arrested, charged with felony assault. As
the campus is fiscally strip-mined, the country is seized by a crisis
of conscience: the student makes headlines now as rape victim and
rapist. An administrator writes a report. The crisis is managed.
Campus
Sex, Campus Security
is Jennifer Doyle’s clear-eyed critique of collegiate
jurisprudence, in the era of campus corporatization, “less-lethal”
weaponry, ubiquitous rape discourse, and litigious anxiety. Today’s
university administrator rides a wave of institutional insecurity, as
the process of administering student protests and sexual-assault
complaints rolls along a Möbius strip of shifting legality. One
thing (a crime) flips into another (a violation) and back again. On
campus, the criminal and civil converge, usually in the form of a
hearing that mimics the rituals of a military court, with its secret
committees and secret reports, and its sanctions and appeals.
What
is the university campus in this world? Who is it for? What sort of
psychic space does it simultaneously produce and police? What is it
that we want, really, when we call campus security?