I figure this is an appropriate story to blog about, mere hours before I take my Freedom of Speech exam…

Some of you may have heard already about a certain “incident” at the University of Western Ontario involving a college freshman, boobies, and the Internet. It turns out that, back in October, a resident of Saugeen-Maitland Hall decided to give one of her male dormmates a birthday present… by performing a striptease for him (and about a half-dozen of his closest friends).

Now, that’s cool and all (I mean, damn, I thought it was nice when my dormmates gave me a giant box o’ snacks for my birthday), but of course, this is 2005, so it didn’t end there. Naturally, someone had a camera, which means pictures were taken, e-mailed to buddies, and before long, uploaded to the Internet. Enter stage right, cranky university administrators:

[B]ecause the young woman apparently performed willingly in the privacy of a residence room and no one filed a complaint, the school says it likely has no cause for discipline.

“We certainly regret this has happened; it’s not something the university condones and we are very disappointed in these students, but rooms in residence are considered to be students’ homes, and what goes on between consenting adults in the privacy of their homes is considered to be their business,” said Susan Grindrod, Western’s vice-president of housing.

“What’s different in this case is that these pictures are going all over the world. With the Internet and personal blogs, pictures can be circulated very quickly, and I’m not sure how we would regulate students’ blogs and websites even if we wanted to,” said Grindrod.

As soon as the raunchy images came to the attention of the administration, officials approached the young woman to ask if she had been forced to strip or tricked into being photographed without her knowledge. She said she had not.

“We were immediately proactive because we wanted to know if there had been any coercion and she told us she was a consenting participant and she was aware that pictures were being taken,” said Grindrod.

“If there had been any coercion, there absolutely would have been repercussions. We do plan to talk to the other (male) students involved and continue to review the situation. It’s still early in the game for us to have figured out how to proceed.”

Actually, in fairness, that’s one of the most level-headed, reasonable-sounding university administrators I’ve ever heard quoted in the press. She’s certainly light years ahead of the idiots at Penn. Anyway, here’s another story about the incident.

Amusingly, “University of Western Ontario” is currently the #2 most popular search on the blog portal Technorati. Heh. There are lots of fellow perverts Internet consumers out there, doing exactly what roughly 50% of you are planning to do immediately after reading this post: trying to find the pictures.

Well, I’ll save you the trouble… sort of. Upon further consideration, I’m not going to link directly to the photo gallery… but let’s just say that if you click here (contains one non-nude, SFW pic) and then, uh, scroll down a bit, you’ll find a link to what you’re looking for, if you’re interested.

All I can say is… O Canada!

P.S. My favorite pic is the 18th 19th one in the gallery. Just sayin’. :) I love the looks on both of their faces — the stripper and the strippee — and also the movie poster on the wall directly behind the guy. The movie? Blow. Heh. He wishes. :)

UPDATE: Some further thoughts on the scandal from fellow UWO students Paige (SFW) and Alex (possibly NSFW because of a photo of what appears to be another “incident” at Saugeen-Maitland Hall; there’s nudity, but you can’t really “see anything”). And yet another UWO student, Laura (SFW), points out that there are t-shirts. Heh.

Incidentally, the University of Western Ontario has an undergraduate population of about 25,000 students, according to Wikipedia, and Saugeen-Maitland Hall, popularly known as “The Zoo” because of its party-hard reputation, has 1,252 residents, also according to Wikipedia. Here’s more from the official dorm wiki.