From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Wed 26 Feb 2003 - 22:42:56 GMT
Originally published on Wednesday, February 26, 2003 in the News
section of The Harvard Crimson.
Women's Group Debates Snow Penis
By HERA A. ABBASI
Crimson Staff Writer
The destroyers of the nine foot snow phallus explained their
motivations to the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) at a meeting last
night, receiving a mixed reaction from the feminist group.
The sculpture’s destroyers, Amy E. Keel ’04 and her roommate Mary C.
Cardinale ’03, said they leveled the ice penis in order to spare others
from being offended by it.
“I think that women or men who are walking to class should not be
subjected to a penis,” Keel said. “It was a structure put up to assert
male dominance.”
Cardinale said that she thought the sculpture was “lewd” and not
“appropriate.”
The 20 students at the meeting debated the free speech rights of the
builders—and destroyers—of the giant penis and discussed how affronted
onlookers could have responded to its construction.
While some RUS members criticized the statue—which was erected in
Tercentenary Theater by members of the men’s crew team on Feb.
11—others were less sure about its inappropriateness.
“I didn’t really think of it that much,” Ellenor J. Honig ’04 said.
“There are things to me that are so much worse.”
Fred O. Smith ’04 said he thought other people might have been upset
when the sculpture was torn down because it took a great deal of work
to construct.
“I wonder how much people’s upsetness is due to how much time they put
in it,” Smith said. “I can think about it both ways.”
However, Smith said that if Keel and Cardinale were threatened as they
took the sculpture down, then that would raise the issue of “male
domination.”
RUS members also discussed whether the First Amendment gave the
sculptors the right to construct the snow phallus.
“It wasn’t anyone’s private property; it was snow,” said Keel. “Taking
down a penis...is not impeding anyone’s free speech.”
RUS Co-President Ilana J. Sichel ’05 said she believed the most
effective way to protest the sculpture would have been to put up signs
with differing opinions.
“I don’t think we have a right to take down things that offend us,”
Sichel said. “We have to put up posters to the contrary.”
The group also threw out possible actions that could have been carried
out in protest of the snow phallus’ construction.
Some who were present said they had thought about building a snow
vagina, but quickly dismissed that type of artistic protest because the
two symbols would be construed differently.
“It’s a fundamental misunderstanding or ignorance what an erect penis
means as opposed to a vagina,” said RUS Vice President Rebeccah G.
Watson ’04.
Honig argued that the group would not have taken the destruction of a
snow vagina well— just as the snow phallus builders were upset by Keel
and Cardinale’s nighttime castration of their sculpture.
“I feel like we’d be having the same discussion,” Honig said.
Copyright © 2001, The Harvard Crimson Inc. All rights reserved.
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