COLLEGE PARK, MD — In the wake of a funding-withdrawal threat from the state legislature and the subsequent cancellation of free, on-campus screenings of Digital Playground’s award-winning XXX film Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge, students at two University of Maryland campuses are organizing their own screenings of the film in protest.University of Maryland, College Park, students have reserved an on-campus facility and will show the film Monday night at the school’s flagship campus.
“What we’re upset about is somebody is trying to control what goes on on campus,” sophomore Liz Ciavolino, a member of Feminism Without Borders, told The Washington Post. “This is symbolic.”
College Park junior Kenton, Stalder, one of the organizers of the screening, told the Baltimore Sun, “There probably isn’t a space on campus that can hold the amount of students who would come out. This has spread like wildfire.”
Stalder, a member of the Student Power Party, said professors have been invited to present a pre-screening lecture about the First Amendment, pornography and free speech.
“We’re trying to be really careful with how we present it because it’s such a contentious issue,” Stalder told the Baltimore Sun. “We want to have the faculty behind us and have the message shaped in a way the administration can embrace it instead of having it squashed.”
“[The issue is] not about porn at all,” Stalder told The Washington Post. “The content doesn’t matter. It’s the precedent of a legislator pulling funding for an entire university based on an issue of morality.”
Students at UM’s Baltimore County campus also plan a screening this week, but details were not firm at press time.
UMBC sophomore Paula McCusker, who licensed the film from Digital Playground, told the Baltimore Sun students were “outraged [about the cancellation at College Park] and would like in some way to make a statement to express that we are disappointed in the College Park administration.”
After state lawmakers late last week threatened to pull the plug on all public funds earmarked for the university, officials at UM’s main campus cancelled a planned midnight Saturday screening of the film that was to have included a sexuality discussion led by speakers from Planned Parenthood. State Sen. Andrew P. Harris [R-Baltimore and Harford counties] said the same fate may befall any Maryland university that hosts any pornographic material in the future, unless the material is presented as part of a recognized class. He has drafted a bill to that effect.
“If they want to press the issue with presenting pornography for fun and entertainment in a university facility, with explicit approval of the university, then they would have to deal with that in future budgets,” he told the Baltimore Sun.
Harris told The Washington Post he will remain firm in his stance unless screenings also include discussions about “the dangers of pornography, the detrimental effect on women and families and the addictive nature of pornography.”
At least half a dozen universities nationwide have offered free-for-students screenings of Pirates II, which Digital Playground provided free of charge to the campuses. In all cases, the screenings included a lecture or discussion component.
Officials at neither Maryland campus had responded to the student-led screenings by Monday morning.
