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A Republican state senator is threatening to punish the University of Wisconsin at Madison through the budget process because a lecturer assigned a reading that involves the choices gay men make about sex partners and contains a reference to oral sex between gay men, the Associated Press reported. Steve Nass, the legislator, is vice chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee. He sent the reading to Madison administrators and to members of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. “Since students at UW Madison are required to read this offensive material it is only appropriate that as leaders of the system you also read this offensive essay and respond with your thoughts on its educational value,” Nass wrote. “Is this what the people of Wisconsin should expect when paying taxes and tuition to support the UW System?”
The reading is not generally required of Madison students, but only of those in one sociology course, Problems of American Racial and Ethnic Minorities, which deals in part with issues of sexuality and racism, and in which students are warned in advance that some material may make them uncomfortable. Pamela Oliver, chair of the sociology department, issued a statement defending the lecturer's course. “Taken within the context of the course, the material appropriately pushes boundaries in order to spark discussion,” she wrote. “Among adult college students, analyzing how people talk about sexuality is considered appropriate material.”
