A Jesuit university in California (United States) has defended a postgraduate course on human sexuality in which a student affirms that he was required to watch a sexual bondage video in class, read material about “Sadomasochistic erotic” and write a detailed “sexual autobiography”.
The student, Naomi EPPS Best, who was in a degree in marriage and family therapy, reported her experiences at the University of Santa Clara in a Opinion article Posted on June 6 at The Wall Street Journal.
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As a Protestant Christian, this 26 -year -old mother with a one -year -old boy considered that the course violated her ethical and religious beliefs. However, he affirms that the instructor and the school administration denied his requests for alternative tasks and other adaptations.
“I chose the university partly for its Catholic tradition,” Best told the National Catholic Register. “I knew I was not entering a Christian counseling program, but I thought there would be tolerance towards traditional or religious visions.”
In a statement provided to the Register, the University of Santa Clara said that the course curriculum was designed to meet the state license requirements for marriage and family therapists, and that it aimed to teach students how to better serve their clients.
“Our teaching staff is committed to an ethical and student focus to teach a science -based curriculum that examines numerous aspects of human sexuality required to obtain the license,” said the university statement. “Understanding these issues is an essential part of the preparation of students to meet the required professional standards and treat individuals from a wide range of human experiences.”
The University also told the Register that it had “offered multiple options for adaptations to this student”, an statement that Best refutes.
The Jesuit Studies Center added that “we do not agree with many of the statements contained in the opinion article.”
A regulation California establishes that marriage and family therapy students must complete instruction on “human sexuality, including the study of physiological, psychological and sociocultural variables associated with sexual behavior and gender identity, and the evaluation and treatment of psychosexual dysfunction.”
“All programs, including that of Santa Clara, must meet these requirements,” said the university in its statement to the register, “and, as MFT programs (marriage and family therapy) in other universities, our program requires internal self -reflection, which is the type of work that therapists ask for their clients.”
“We recognize that the course content necessarily includes uncomfortable and delicate issues. We appreciate the concerns raised by any of our students, including those expressed by this student,” said the statement.
In his opinion article, Best wrote that he abandoned the “human sexuality” class of Chongzheng Wei after the professor “reproduced a video of a female ‘influencer’ participating in a sexual bondage activity”.
Best wrote: “When the lights lit, the professor smiled and asked if we wanted to try ourselves.” She decided to leave, she wrote, because “I didn’t want to find out if the next one would be a live demonstration.”
Another class requirement was to write a “integral sexual autobiography” of eight to ten pages that should include “first sexual memories”, as well as “current experiences and future goals with an action plan.”
The task was detailed in the Course programaccording to Best, who said he shared it in his substitution account after the university eliminated it from its website.
Best said he went to several authorities in Santa Clara before making his experience public – anonymously first in replacement and then in The Wall Street Journal.
“I appealed to the Dean, the Rector, to the Office of Title IX, the President of the University and even the Ministry of Campus,” he wrote. “I am not sure who was more surprised, the priest reading the program or me, sharing screen with sexually explicit videos and images.”
After appealing to Wei, he said they told him that his “sexual dissemination would not be required” and that is why he enrolled again in class. However, the content was no less disturbing, he said. A task, according to her, required that students write something they would not like about their genitals or breasts, “to be read aloud in class by another student.”
In the end, he chose to withdraw from the class, delaying his plans to become a graduate therapist and incurring additional costs, since he would have to take extra classes to graduate and receive his license. He wrote that his refund request was denied.
In response to the University’s statement that had been offered multiple adaptations, Best pointed out his publication of June 10 in Replaceck, in which he says that the department head offered him a “unique exception” to complete the task through continuing education credits. He wrote that this was “unacceptable” because other students remained subject to “these unimportant requirements.”
Once she began writing about her experience anonymously in substock, Best said she realized what, according to her, was a change that had happened in the academic field of therapy.
“I realized that I had stumbled with something bigger. The entire field of therapy education has been emptied and filled with critical theory. Therapists are no longer trained to be neutral; they are trained to be agents of political change,” he wrote.
“Concepts such as modesty and marital privacy are not only treated as optional or even discarded. They are seen as oppressive norms that must be actively fought,” said Best.
Another mandatory class, “multicultural counseling,” he wrote, was highly politicized.
Students were told that the “objective, rational and linear thinking”, the “deferred gratification” and make a “plan for the future” are features of “white culture.” In the “human sexuality” class, the teacher, he wrote, taught that children who experience six months of “gender anguish” should be “affirmed” in their belief that they are members of the opposite sex.
In an open letter to the administration of Santa Clara published in substock on June 6, Best described his experience in greater graphic detail and asked the school administrators to “immediately interrupt the obligatory task of sexual autobiography”, allow students to choose not to do work contrary to their personal religious beliefs and allow them to finish their program “without obstacles or reprisals”.
The University of Santa Clara is located within the Diocese of San José, headed by Bishop Oscar Cantú. The diocese did not respond to requests for comments at the time of publication.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in the National Catholic Register.
Zelda Caldwell
Zelda Caldwell is a senior writer of the National Catholic Register based in Washington DC (United States).