Editor:

In a recent Times-Picayune piece (“Loyola Quashes Ticklish Staging” Saturday, Jan. 24, 2004) regarding the cancellation of “The Vagina Monologues,” writer Coleman Warner suggests that our interim president told a female student to discourage “sexually suggestive dress by women” rather than stage a production of the feminist play, as the former action would be a more appropriate way to combat violence against women.

This article implies that Father Byron believes that women are assaulted because of suggestive clothing.

While I am confident that Father Byron would never have uttered such hate speech, I am troubled by the picture that the Times-Picayune is painting of our university.

By implying that Father Byron believes that rape would end if women didn’t dress in a particular way, Loyola is made to sound like a place where men are expected to take no responsibility for their actions and where women are expected to cower.

I know that I would never pay $21,320 a year to send my child to a school where the president believes men to be irrepressibly violent and stupid, and clothing to be the cause of rape.

However, local media (hopefully) misquoted our president in a way that makes my university sound like a place where students of both sexes are degraded to the status of dogs; not the proud institution of higher learning that Loyola has become through years of hard work.

The story of Loyola’s unique hostility to “The Vagina Monologues” has gone national, and, while the effect on our reputation as a “Social Justice University” is yet to be determined, I strongly believe that a campaign (actual or media-created) to end sexual violence by telling women to cover up would put our university on the same intellectual tier as the infamous Bob Jones University.

As a student who has invested four years in this university, it deeply upsets me to see our reputation besmirched like this.

I urge Father Byron to investigate the way that the local media are portraying him and our university, and to defend himself if necessary.

I also urge all members of the Loyola community to follow Catholic teaching by taking a stand against sexual degradation of men and women and toencourage personal control over reptilian urges rather than erroneously blame assault victims.

Muetze HellmerSociology/Spanish Senior