Brockport students protest lecturer Tucker Max

By Molly Stanton

Class of 2013

We at the College of Brockport have made massive efforts to change culture through things such as Health Promotions, Title IX, the Women’s Center, Rape Crisis Services and the Sexual Assault Prevention Education Task Force. Bringing Max here starts to contradict the efforts toward creating respectful norms and ensuring a safe community for everyone to feel comfortable in and free from the continuum of violence against women.  Topics that Max covers are degrading toward women and promote rape culture, the exact things our campus is trying to eliminate.

Max’s message, stated on the homepage of his website, says that “I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead.”

The true Brockport message of being inclusive, open to diversity and respectful is being conveyed through events such as Walk a Mile in Her Shoes, Take Back the Night, Eagle Check, Healthy Monday: Stand up Guys, Sexy Bingo and an upcoming lecture by activist Shelby Knox.

Additionally, Operation Green and Gold is a specific effort by Brockport men to speak out against violence against women. After painting one hand green and one hand gold, male Brockport students compose a statement about how they will personally contribute to ending this violence. This being said, Max coming to this campus conflicts with the ideals trying to be put onto students, especially new freshmen here at the college.

Aside from his material content and its messages, the Max event is funded by the college and may make many Brockport students question the use of our mandatory BSG fee. Multiple questions of the student government’s decision-making process, fiscal responsibility and the nature and outcome of the student summer survey have erupted.

   As students, we all pay the BSG mandatory fee of $96 per semester. For those of us who may not be in favor of Max giving a lecture at Brockport, we start to wonder: if this is a mandated fee, then why does our money have to support misogynistic and degrading “comedians?”

The summer BSG student input survey, distributed via email to all students, was supposed to catch a pretty good idea of what type of campus events students are interested in. However, it is curious to think about what the actual number of responses was to this survey and also how much of an impact it had on the final decision to bring him here.

I think many students, faculty and staff may be questioning who actually made the final decision to bring him here and how much it is costing the students. Paying $20,000 for Max to speak is a reckless use of student fee dollars. The effort of getting student input on who they want to spend their fee on through surveys is an effort, but further steps are needed.

Knowing how much money we are spending each year on tuition, it is frustrating to see some of the events and activities it is used for. How can we succeed in creating a community of respect and genuine concern for others when our major fall BSG-sponsored speaker is Max? Obviously, much like the campus concerts, we can’t please every student with every event. Still, more research needs to be done on individuals such as Tucker Max and musical acts BSG plans on bringing here.

You ask yourself the question, is degrading and promoting the hatred of women funny, as some but not all of Max’s material implies?  Is he coming to our campus to apologize for the message he has already portrayed, or is he coming to show our students to be more like his books describe? Max has recently stated that he is “retired.” So why is he coming here at all? Is he going to recant the messages in his many books, including one turned into a movie, even though writing books is not his focus anymore? What is he going to talk about?

Many students would enjoy a humorous lecture based on college experiences, but much more so if they could enjoy the event without feeling like their own sex and its stereotypes were bring attacked and questioned.

By Issac Jacobs

Class of 2011

As a graduate of the College at Brockport (Class of 2011), I was rather disappointed to learn that the current Brockport Student Government (BSG) leaders of my alma mater are paying $20,000 to bring Tucker Max on campus as a guest speaker Oct. 2.

Furthermore, I feel embarrassed and perhaps ashamed to call Brockport my alma mater in learning of Max being brought to campus.

Why?

As clearly displayed on his website and in other media, Max does nothing more than promote misogyny (hatred of women), racism and homophobia in the filth that he spews in his publications and speeches.

We have enough of this in our society, which already heavily influences the perspectives and behavior of our young men to live and treat others in such a degrading and inhumane manner.

We already have plenty of reasons why the statistics on sexual harassment/assault, anti-LGBT bullying, assault and racism are so high in this nation. So why would BSG decide to spend such a large sum of money to bring someone like Max to campus, only to potentially see an increase of misogyny, racism and homophobia among the Brockport student body?