UT students plan to carry sex toys in protest
Published 11:45 am Tuesday, October 13, 2015
AUSTIN – Regardless of where they stand on the issues, students at the University of Texas give high marks for creativity to a novel protest being planned over a law that allows students to carry weapons on campus.
Jessica Jin, 24, is urging students to carry sex toys to campus, instead of firearms, on the first day of classes next fall. Jin’s idea went viral over the weekend and has garnered national media attention.
“I was feeling very frustrated,” said Jin, a UT graduate who thought up the plan while sitting in Austin traffic, frustrated over the latest round of campus shootings. “I didn’t expect this to take off.”
That it did. Even if the protest is a year away, the campus was stirring with news of it Monday. Students said they’d learned about it from friends online or via the campus newspaper, the Daily Texan.
As of yesterday afternoon, Jin said, about 5,500 students singled their intention to participate.
“I don’t have one of the sex toys,” said Jacob Robles, a 19-year sophomore from Houston. “But if someone was to give me one, I’d probably participate.”
Robles said he opposes concealed carry.
“I would rather people have a campus full of sex toys instead of guns,” he said. “Let’s say everybody does the campus carry. You feel like there would be duels like the old days.”
Marissa Adams, 21, a senior from San Marcos who is majoring in retail merchandising, doesn’t plan to participate. She called the plan “vulgar.”
Nonetheless, Adams grinned as she discussed it.
“I think it’s hilarious,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before. I’m sure other campuses will have their own versions.”
Denis Piereschi, 22, an exchange student from Paris who is studying architecture, contrasted Texas’ concealed carry law to those in France that forbid people from carry guns at all, or even displaying knives.
“It’s just a way of making fun of it,” he said. “I support this initiative.”
Emma Holmes, 25, on staff with the university’s executive education program, noted a story in the campus newspaper illustrated by a drawing of a cowboy carrying a holstered dildo.
Though Holmes couldn’t say whether she would participate, she said she likes the attention it’s bringing to the new gun law.
“I think it’s very smart,” she said. “I don’t think this is crazy at all.”
Public universities across Texas are working on plans to implement the controversial law, passed in the last session of the Legislature. Meanwhile, the law has garnered more attention amid recent campus shootings throughout the country.
Citing fears of guns on campus, an emeritus economics professor, Daniel Hamermesh, last week announced that he is withdrawing from teaching at the university.
In a letter to University of Texas President Gregory Fenves, Hamermesh wrote: “With a huge group of students, my perception is that the risk that a disgruntled student might bring a gun into the classroom and start shooting at me has been substantially enhanced by the concealed-carry law.”
Gary Susswein, a university spokesman, said he’s seen the Facebook discussion of the sex-toy protest, and students have a right to free expression.
“We view this as protected political speech and will treat it as such,” he said.
Meanwhile, Jin said that while she’s no longer a student, she’s part of the Longhorn family and is concerned about what happens on campus.
“It was a knee-jerk satirical reaction,” she said. The next 10 months, she added, “gives us a lot of time to mobilize.”
John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jaustin@cnhi.com