This campus is a magnet for perverts.If you’re a “Police Beat” devotee like me, then you have probably noticed it features a constant stream of stories on sexual deviants. According to the Lantern article that ran last month, there were 14 reports of public indecency in 1997. Eight of the complaints were for public masturbation and the rest were for people exposing themselves.The cases are often perplexing. Last month, a woman reported that a man sat down next to her on a campus bench and started masturbating. I guess she didn’t want to believe it was happening, but she finally took off when he finished his business on the ground and tried to cover it up with a magazine.So bench sitters beware. As the weather gets better, look out for freaks. The article said reports of public masturbation increase as spring approaches, as five of the incidents happened between March and June.Women are not the only targets. Any man who has stepped into the wrong campus bathroom can tell you that. The Underground studios and offices are in the Ohio Union basement, so I’m stuck using the bathroom there the hours I spend at the station. That potty is wacko central.According to a friend who used to work for the Union, the restroom door had to be replaced with a stall door that allowed people to see over and under it in an attempt to prevent sexual goings-on. Someone also keeps putting a hole in the wall between the stalls. Every time the hole gets fixed, it’s back to busted the next week.There have been times I’ve been at the station for a while and seen the same two guys acting shady in the restroom every time I went. One pretends he’s peeing or washing his hands while the other stands on a toilet and peers over the top of the stall.Apparently there’s similar problems in Larkins Hall. During the controversy with the gay-bashing wrestler, a heated letter was written to a local alternative weekly about the trouble athletes have to face with perverts. The letter said some men stand in the shower for hours and gawk at jocks.Then there’s the Main Library. Whatever it is about that place that gets people going, I’ll never know. Along with other state libraries, it has been beset by problems with someone cutting pictures of boys out of books.There’s unbelievable weirdness scrawled on the study cubicle walls, with propositions for sexual encounters in the labyrinthian confines of the upper floors. Like the Union, it has creepy bathrooms. Last year, a friend of mine was confronted in one of them by a large black man waving around his large black thing at him.These incidents give gay men a bad name. People are quick to jump to stereotypes, and equate the actions of a few horny weirdos with the rest of the gay community. But the constant between campus perverts is not that they’re gay, it’s that they’re men.The article said all the suspects in the cases were male. A psychologist called public masturbation “a male display behavior” not too distant from other animals and “not much different than a peacock fanning his feathers.”Well, maybe a little different. It would be a lot more amusing if it were peacocks popping up in restrooms and park benches.
Nathan Crabbe is a junior from Akron who thought public sex was a good idea until he saw ugly people doing it. His talk show will move to Tuesday at 7 p.m. Spring quarter.
