Disorderly Conduct or Free Speech? Treatment of Protesters Violated Constitutional Rights

Author: Katie Simpson

Editor's note: The author first submitted her article to The Campus last week but due to a technical problem, it was not printed. The Campus regrets the error.

You may have heard some version of this story already. Yes, I am talking about "The Art of Kissing" protest. And yes, I was one of the protesters at that voyeuristic debacle Saturday night. What happened there is about more than just a ridiculously sexist, racist and heterosexist workshop or performance or whatever you want to call it. It's about a double standard when it comes to expressing the right of freedom of expression.

Five concerned students (myself and four other women) decided that because of the content of the Web site run by the presenter,(Michael Christian, aka William Cane), and the content of his book, "The Art of Kissing," we would make some posters, buy tickets to the show, and monitor the performance for quality. We had no specific plan — we were just going to watch for offensive material and act accordingly. The reason we couldn't have a specific plan is because we didn't know what happened during his show. If the performance turned out to just be strange, silly or immature, we would have shaken our heads, written off the two hours we spent there and gone on our way. But unfortunately, the show was all of those things and more. It was filled with the same sexist, racist, and heterosexist material that was found in his book and Web site.

Because news of our protest had leaked, there were five — yes five — security guards at the event. We protesters numbered only five. Yup, there were as many guards as there were protesters. You may be wondering, if there were five security guards at the event, how was the rest of campus adequately patrolled? This crossed my mind as well.

One of my fellow protesters was thrown out of the show by one of these security guards for choosing to stand during the middle of the show to express her opinion — to disagree with the performer's choice of offensive vocabulary. Another protester left the show because its offensive language was too much. The rest of us decided it would be best if all five of us stayed together, so we also left the show, with the idea of going back in together at the end of the performance.

When the show ended and people started filing out, we went back in to hold up posters for the exiting audience members to see. The posters we had hung up had been taken down and confiscated. These posters contained excerpts from the website and the book "The Art of Kissing" which contained sexist and heterosexist language, and discussed how such language and sexism leads to problematic power structures in relationships — which can then lead to feelings of powerlessness, rape and the unfortunate perpetuation of such unnecessary evils. With one exception, all of our other, big posters also somehow made it into the hands of the security officers. I stood on a chair with that poster. A fellow protester handed out condoms yelling her tongue in cheek response to the show, "because good kissing leads to good sex." (An ironic side note. The act was billed as an alternative to sex — kissing as a form of abstinence. Yet it featured a skit with a girl teasing a guy until he got an erection, illustrated by the umbrella he was holding. And there were many references to "getting all worked up," "foreplay" and "bodies rubbing together." If kissing leads to sex, which this act suggests, how does it support abstinence?)

We were then asked to leave the social space so we moved into the lounge adjacent to The Grille, where I again stood on a chair with the remaining poster. This poster was more sarcastic than our others and was, in essence, poking fun at Christian's paradoxical "abstinence" message and the long list in his book that describes different ways to kiss different body parts. The poster said: "Isn't oral sex just another form of kissing? Introducing the genital kiss!" This poster, which was a simple and even inadequate response to such an offensive performance, was the source of a sort of showdown between us protesters and security and the town police.

I stood calmly on the chair in the lobby, holding this poster above my head, while we answered questions from curious onlookers as to why we disagreed with the show. For the most part people were receptive to our ideas and understood and/or respected our desire to express ourselves. Yet almost immediately I was told to leave. Two security guards, one male and one female, asked me to give them my poster and leave. The other protesters and I said that we understood our First Amendment rights to include freedom of speech and expression so we refused to leave. We were asked repeatedly to stand down, and a guard even attempted to rip the poster from me, but we refused to leave. The guards were not able to articulate which school rule we were breaking, or why we should leave, except for the simple reason that they told us to. This was not reason enough for us, so I stayed on the chair, we continued to answer questions, and the security guards called the town police for "assistance." Shortly thereafter, a policeman arrived and asked me to give him the poster. He tried to tear it from my hands, but I would not give it up.

We asked what law we were breaking and he said if he had to, he would charge us with "disorderly conduct." Now to me, this seemed ridiculous. I was not Michael Christian, onstage surrounded by eight couples making out in a near porn-fest; in my mind, Christian was the only person at McCullough guilty of disorderly conduct. And remember, we protesters were not yelling, or being physically violent or threatening in any way. There were no children around; the poster was less tasteless then many of the innuendos that were coming from the stage earlier in the evening. The policeman then said that if I did not leave, he would force me to leave. Does this sound like an over-reaction to you? A few women standing around, one of whom had a poster in her hands, answering some questions, engaging in dialogue. Sound threatening? Well, Middlebury College's Department of Public Safety and the town police sure thought we were. So we left, and now we're using this public forum to further this discussion,

In the days since the incident, dozens of people who witnessed this violation of our freedom of speech have come up to me to express solidarity and concern and to hear the outcome of the mess. But the outcome is now unsure. Incident reports? That's what we've been told. Is this over? Not by a long shot.