Visit a brothel for college credit
Posted at 11:55 AM Apr 15, 2008
AP Photo/Ronda Churchill
In an article remarkably free of groan-inducing puns and titillating phrases, The Associated Press reports on a college class trip to the Chicken Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada. Students at Randolph College in Virginia have the opportunity to take a class that, as part of the American Culture Program, focuses on a different geographical area of the United States each semester and takes the students on a field trip to study it first hand. This semester, students are studying the culture of Nevada - and the legal brothel system has been included as a topic in the course work.
According to the AP piece, students were given the ability to opt out of visiting the brothel if it offended them - but everyone was in attendance.
I think this is a pretty cool thing - although the sex industry is everywhere, it's pretty rare for people to get the chance to interact with someone who works in the business in a non-sexual context. I would bet good money that the students in this class had their assumptions about the sex industry challenged in a pretty intense way.
And also, who isn't curious about seeing the inside of a brothel?
--Audacia Ray
more: Media Critic
You mean there's something progressive going on in my state? Wow! After William & Mary censored the Sex Workers' Art Show and the local paper balked at giving awards to two art students because their work depicted nudity, I was starting to think Virginia was hopeless. Maybe not.
Posted by: Kristina Wright at April 17, 2008 1:44 PM
