O My......

[Madeline]

Female students at Dartmouth were surprised last month when they received a mirror in their campus mailboxes. The students were instructed by an accompanying note to use the mirror to look at their vulvas. The "experiment" is part of Mayuka Kowaguchi's senior project entitled "Orchid." As you can imagine, the mirrors have caused a lot of controversy.

Miss Kowaguchi wrote:
I was inspired to begin this project through my own personal experience of having difficulty developing a healthy relationship with my body, particularly those characteristics that make me uniquely female, due to my conservative, Japanese upbringing. I designed this as my end-of-term project proposal for Sexperts training in the Fall of 2009, and with encouragement from those around me, the project became a reality.

Dartmouth's President Jim Yong Kim endorsed the project and said of it: "f this sparks a more open and honest dialogue about women's health and about how gender is really a critical issue when you think about individual health, I think that's a good thing."

Many students, however, were offended by Kowaguchi's project. In an opinion piece in the campus newspaper Dartmouth, columnist Grace D'Arcy wrote that asking students "to shift their perspectice from the expectations and limitations of belief patterns" attacked religious perspectives on campus. She goes on: "The Orchid Project's backhanded dissemination of letters insulting and urging the abandonment of faith, cannot and must not be ignored for the action that they truly represent: a liberal attack on faith."

Others on campus opposed the project for less philosophical reasons. The school's Office of Pluralism and Leadership sponsored the project. One angry alumnus wrote: "n a time of budgetary famine, it defies comprehension that the [office] would pay for the distribution of mirrors to all 1,976 undergraduate women on campus."

An Experiment at Dartmouth | Education

This was a silly idea 40 years ago. I am bumfuddled a college as prestigious as Dartmouth would fund such a thing.

Your thoughts?

 

[daveman]

Let's see...vague, ill-defined purpose; use of the word "dialog"; middle-school-level sexual titillation; waste of money -- yep, that's a college project, all right.

 

[xotoxi]

I thought that Kim Jong Il was the President of Upper Korea, not President of Darmouth.

 

[editec]

So the Dartmouth co-eds got a mirror to look at their privates for some silly undergrad's social science experiment.

So what?

Why is this a big deal?

I don't get it.

 

[Middleman]

Didn't they do stuff like this back in the 1960s and 70s as part of the Feminist movement? I don't think this is new or groundbreaking.

It definitely shows how dumbed down 'higher' education has become.

 

[zzzz]

The human body is a natural thing. (For the most of us anyway.) To be ashamed of a part of yourself or not being aware of your body parts is ... not right. The objective here might be ok but the method was wrong. They should have sent fliers out and those who wanted the mirrrors could have gotten them. Although how many will use them for the intended purpose?

The cost factor is another issue but colleges get a lot of donated funds and this would have ammounted to less than $5000 probably. The cost of a couple of classes tuition, maybe just one there.

 

[Granny]

Female students at Dartmouth were surprised last month when they received a mirror in their campus mailboxes. The students were instructed by an accompanying note to use the mirror to look at their vulvas. The "experiment" is part of Mayuka Kowaguchi's senior project entitled "Orchid." As you can imagine, the mirrors have caused a lot of controversy.

Miss Kowaguchi wrote:
I was inspired to begin this project through my own personal experience of having difficulty developing a healthy relationship with my body, particularly those characteristics that make me uniquely female, due to my conservative, Japanese upbringing. I designed this as my end-of-term project proposal for Sexperts training in the Fall of 2009, and with encouragement from those around me, the project became a reality.

Dartmouth's President Jim Yong Kim endorsed the project and said of it: "f this sparks a more open and honest dialogue about women's health and about how gender is really a critical issue when you think about individual health, I think that's a good thing."

Many students, however, were offended by Kowaguchi's project. In an opinion piece in the campus newspaper Dartmouth, columnist Grace D'Arcy wrote that asking students "to shift their perspectice from the expectations and limitations of belief patterns" attacked religious perspectives on campus. She goes on: "The Orchid Project's backhanded dissemination of letters insulting and urging the abandonment of faith, cannot and must not be ignored for the action that they truly represent: a liberal attack on faith."

Others on campus opposed the project for less philosophical reasons. The school's Office of Pluralism and Leadership sponsored the project. One angry alumnus wrote: "n a time of budgetary famine, it defies comprehension that the [office] would pay for the distribution of mirrors to all 1,976 undergraduate women on campus."

An Experiment at Dartmouth | Education

This was a silly idea 40 years ago. I am bumfuddled a college as prestigious as Dartmouth would fund such a thing.

Your thoughts?

Maybe she caught the scene from "Fried Green Tomatoes" and had an instant brain fart.

 

[HUGGY]

Female students at Dartmouth were surprised last month when they received a mirror in their campus mailboxes. The students were instructed by an accompanying note to use the mirror to look at their vulvas. The "experiment" is part of Mayuka Kowaguchi's senior project entitled "Orchid." As you can imagine, the mirrors have caused a lot of controversy.

Miss Kowaguchi wrote:
I was inspired to begin this project through my own personal experience of having difficulty developing a healthy relationship with my body, particularly those characteristics that make me uniquely female, due to my conservative, Japanese upbringing. I designed this as my end-of-term project proposal for Sexperts training in the Fall of 2009, and with encouragement from those around me, the project became a reality.

Dartmouth's President Jim Yong Kim endorsed the project and said of it: "f this sparks a more open and honest dialogue about women's health and about how gender is really a critical issue when you think about individual health, I think that's a good thing."

Many students, however, were offended by Kowaguchi's project. In an opinion piece in the campus newspaper Dartmouth, columnist Grace D'Arcy wrote that asking students "to shift their perspectice from the expectations and limitations of belief patterns" attacked religious perspectives on campus. She goes on: "The Orchid Project's backhanded dissemination of letters insulting and urging the abandonment of faith, cannot and must not be ignored for the action that they truly represent: a liberal attack on faith."

Others on campus opposed the project for less philosophical reasons. The school's Office of Pluralism and Leadership sponsored the project. One angry alumnus wrote: "n a time of budgetary famine, it defies comprehension that the [office] would pay for the distribution of mirrors to all 1,976 undergraduate women on campus."

An Experiment at Dartmouth | Education

This was a silly idea 40 years ago. I am bumfuddled a college as prestigious as Dartmouth would fund such a thing.

Your thoughts?

It's much better that the girls use their cell phones and take pics O the Puss and download them on thier puters and the internet. That way they can get the useful second opinions.