Chastity on a college campus

Now there’s a challenge, as Tom Wolfe made terribly clear in his book “I Am Charlotte Simmons.” Anybody with any connection to college life in America — or just a general awareness of the current culture — knows how decadent it has become for students, in body, mind and spirit.

What can be done? Some determined students at Princeton have asked, and they’re working on an answer.

Living a chaste life on a college campus is difficult. Defending your commitments to chastity, whether to your friends in the dorm room or to your professors in the classroom, is even more difficult. If you haven’t been a university student for a while, think back to what the sexual climate on campus was like when you were in college. Now imagine what it’s like with official university LGBT offices pushing for same-sex marriage and gay rights. Not only the practice of chastity but the institution of marriage itself is called into question. Ask yourself this question: would a student invite more scorn if he penned an op/ed for the campus newspaper supporting same-sex marriage or defending sexual chastity?

But students are beginning to push back. And at Princeton they’ve organized the first-ever intercollegiate conference defending the dignity of human sexuality and marriage. Not just rebelling against the administration, one organizer explained the conference to me in this way: “We are having this conference because we sincerely care about our peers, our future families, and our society. This conference is not only to combat the challenges faced on campuses such as Princeton but also to provide a better understanding of what a healthy and meaningful relationship is, what marriage is, and what sex can be.”

It has magnanimous goals.

The Anscombe conference is intended to equip students from other schools with the academic arguments (from a variety of disciplines) that support committed marital love, a feminism not at odds with motherhood, and an ethic of chastity that seeks to integrate the entire person (rather than only focus on the sexual part of the person) within romantic relationships.

And it is dedicated to the honor, memory and work of Dr. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, making it even more perfect.

I would urge you to go if you’re in that general vicinity. But I’ll take that further. This conference is so good, so needed, so unique and overdue, go if you can…no matter where you are in the country.

University faculty–let your students know. University student–make plans to attend. The first of its kind, this conference promises to be a wonderful opportunity for anyone looking to emerge from the sexual ruins and promote a more excellent way.

It will be held at Princeton University on Friday night, February 16, and all day Saturday, February 17. It is open to all university students (registration and a small fee are required). Please contact anscombe@princeton.edu as soon as possible for more details.

Spread the word.