Editor:

Over the past year, I have noticed that the lengths to which organizations have gone to advertise have reached absurdity and have even started to degrade our beautiful campus. Let me explain.

First of all, a strong portion of Loyola students claim to be “environmentally-minded.”

However, when you walk around our campus, this is not found to be so. Trash, food and cigarette butts litter our campus.

I have rarely seen students, supposedly concerned for our environment, stop and pick up the trash that occupies our backyard.

Even more alarming is that a percentage of this trash consists of flyers and handbills that student organizations, concert halls, or even our very own LUCAP and SGA utilize to invite or inform students of something. How often have we seen organizations strew their plugs all over the benches in the quad, the tables in the Danna Center, or even the grounds all over campus?

Instead of walking through the Danna Center to see ads on the walls, we can now go to the Peace Quad and sift through the trash on the ground to see which meetings are taking place that evening. Whatever happened to paying attention to our campus environment?

However, what distresses me the most is the content of some of these advertisements and their contradiction to another of Loyola’s ‘supposed’ premises. Many of the advertisements for off-campus businesses promoting their parties blatantly use sex as a tool to draw in their targets.

For example, the club 360 is well known for its ads with provocative images blanketing the grounds of our campus. Recently, a company run by Loyola students has advertised for two of their parties, “Flirt” and “Karma,” by distributing professionally-made flyers adorned with a scantily clad female on each.

Undoubtedly, these ads use the female body; it merely objectifies the women’s body as bait to pull in money at the door.

Shouldn’t we at the critical thinking university stop and realize that these ads are degrading women to a substandard level? Where is the feminism that would be appalled at these insults?

If we truly are women and men with and for others, then shouldn’t we, as a student body and institution, stand up and demand that this will not happen at Loyola? Shouldn’t we mandate that our administration and our SGA make a stand?

If we say one thing, we should follow it up with consistent action.

Benjamin Clapperphilosophy/religious studies sophomore