Group H's Blog

Reading Sex in the Heartland has really made me realize how much KU has changed in the last 50 years. What was taboo then wouldn’t even have people thinking twice about it now. When I think about KU today and sex the student newspaper’s annual ‘Sex on the Hill’ edition comes to mind. It amazes me that on the same campus that would expel students for having sex now produces something like ‘Sex on the Hill.’ In Sex in the Heartland Bailey discusses that the administration knew that students were having sex. But as long as they kept it private, there was no issue made of it. But if students took it public, like in the case of the two students renting a motel room for the night, there was trouble. In that incident the boy was actually expelled for staying in a motel with a girl. Fast-forward about 50 years and now you have the topic of sex discussed openly in “Sex on the Hill.” What gets people upset today is not students staying in motels together or unmarried women going on the Pill, but are pictures of students scantily clothed and in sexual poses with each other on World War II memorials.  I do not think that sex could be any more public unless people are actually doing the deed on Wescoe Beach. I think that it is fine was sex is discussed more, but where is the line drawn? If we have become so much more relaxed about sex in the last 50 years, how much more relaxed will we get in the next 50 years?

-Ashley Hammond

Clarina Nichols was born in Vermont in 1810. She received a very good education before she married in 1830. She was a mother, teacher, and worked for a newspaper. She divorced her husband in 1843 after having three kids with him. She then married George Nichols, who was a newspaper editor. In 1854 she moved to Lawrence, Kansas. After her husband’s death a few years later she moved to Wyandotte Country and became an associate editor of an abolitionist newspaper called Quindaro Chindowan. She went throughout Wyandotte lecturing about woman’s rights. She also tried to get as many women as possible to sign a petition that they would present in the Wyandotte Convention. During this convention she would use any opportunity she got to talk to the delegates about her feelings about equality. She would attempt to talk to them during recess and whenever she could. It is said that she had influence in Wyandotte’s constitution because is included some things she felt passionately about. These things were: woman having right in regards to child custody, property rights of married women, and equality in public school. It makes sense why these issues were so important to her. She was a woman who went through a divorce where children were involved. There were not a lot of divorces during this time period so it makes sense that there would not be many laws pertaining to custody of children after a divorce. She later joined with other women such as Susan B. Anthony in the fight for women’s suffrage.

Information from:

http://www.kshs.org/real_people/nichols_clarina.htm

Picture From:

http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/7787