All people have their bounds of tastelessness, some farther out there than others. And the organizers of Yale’s Sex Week apparently found theirs the other day when an invited speaker, the pornographer Paul Thomas, screened a film that included scenes of “fantasy rape, bondage and piercing.”

The screening was interrupted before the film ended, although one organizer tells Yale Daily News that there was a “sense of revelry” in the audience at the images, and that the crowd was “mostly supportive of the film.” What kind of student is going to these things?

As I mentioned when Sex Week had only just begun, it tends to be a prurient chain of events glossed over by a self-righteous notion that serious issues are being discussed—a charming mélange, really, of the frivolousness and arrogance of the Ivy League. And true to form, Sex Week’s director, Joe Citarella, defended the abortive screening “because it gave people the opportunity to speak out against violent pornography and the effect it can have on the public’s conception of women.” You see, it was all just a big learning experience!