Washington, DC – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation stands in solidarity this week with over 1,000 students, recent alumni, and faculty at the University of Notre Dame petitioning the university president to install pornography filters on campus Internet.
As part of the annual White Ribbon Against Pornography Week, student activists are raising awareness about the many problems caused by pornography, highlighting the negative effects that pornography has on both an individual and societal level. In addition to their petition to the president, both male and female students wrote op-eds explaining pornography’s harmful effects in Notre Dame’s newspaper, The Observer.
NCOSE Senior Vice-President and Executive Director Dawn Hawkins, who addressed Notre Dame students in a lecture yesterday to celebrate White Ribbon Week, said, “Parents sending their children to a university should expect that hardcore pornography would be blocked on school-provided Wi-Fi at a time when sexual assault flourishes on campuses throughout the US.
In her talk, Hawkins noted that numerous scientific studies link pornography usage to sexual violence and compulsive sexual behaviors, common problems on college campuses. NCOSE has continuously highlighted the numerous harmful effects of pornography through its campaign “Pornography: A Public Health Crisis.”
“We stand behind these courageous students in their efforts to remove pornography from daily student life,” Hawkins said, “and we strongly encourage Rev. John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president, to heed this call for a campus that does not provide students access to pornography.”
To learn more about the public health crisis of pornography, visit https://endsexualexploitation.org/publichealth
