 "Photo: Rebecca Moore")
The odder the title, the bigger the turnout.
Two students and a professor presented “Nuts, Sluts and Perverts, Part II” to a packed room as part of Wesleyan’s University College Day.
The three-part presentation covered child molesters, cults and the misconstrued popularity of Al Capone by popular culture.
Lavena Hernandez, senior criminal justice and psychology major, gave the first part of the presentation over child rape.
“I have a passion for children victims of crime,” Hernandez said.
Her interest in the subject was sparked after seeing multiple cases of child abuse while working for the medical examiner’s office.
“It’s a very interesting topic that needs to be researched so all of us can come together to find solutions,” she said.
To the nervous laughter of the audience, Hernandez recommended incarcerating child rapists then torturing them to save on prison costs.
“When the crime of child rape is committed, do these heinous criminals have the capabilities of being rehabilitated,” she asked. “Do we lock them up or let them rot? Or do we save them with treatment for their low self-esteem and lack of self-control; formulating tests they achieve for future release back into society and cross our fingers they do not recidivate with the same crime.”
Allison Tidwell, senior sociology major, followed Hernandez and spoke about women in cults.
“When a cult leader is looking for a member to participate, they want the best and the brightest,” she said. “In the majority of cases, there is usually some kind of life-changing event that has happened to this person that has caused them to become involved in this form of behavior.”
Lisbeth Cervantes, freshman criminal justice major, said she found the presentation over cults fascinating.
“To know there’s still cults today, and 5,000 [of them],” she said, “I was astonished by that.”
The presentation concluded with Dr. Greg Gullion’s presentation “Al Capone: Social Construction of a Gangster Superstar.”
“When you think about gangsters, this is typically the guy everybody thinks about first,” he said.
Gullion spoke about Capone’s rise through the Chicago mob and dispelled many misconceptions about Capone.
“A lot of people think he died in prison,” he said. “They actually released him because he had contracted syphilis.”
Capone more than likely contracted the disease while running a prostitution house for the Five Points Gang in New York City, Gullion said.
Gullion was a founder of the original “Nuts, Sluts and Perverts” that ran during last year’s UCD with Dr. Carol Johnson-Gerendas.
The final name came from a brainstorming session in which more timid titles were thrown around.
“We thought ‘nuts, sluts and perverts’ would bring people in even though that wasn’t the entire content,” Gullion said. “We thought the university would fire us, but we ended up having the largest session last year.”
Be the first to comment on this article!