On Wednesday, Sept. 23, approximately 40 students gathered by the Frederick Douglass statue at 12 p.m. in a rally against the inflatable dolls that were sold at West Chester University’s bookstore up until Friday, Sept. 18.
Earlier this morning, President Greg Weisenstein sent out an email to WCU faculty and students. In his statement, President Weisenstein mentioned: “The management of Student Services Inc., who owns and operates the bookstore, removed this product from the bookstore shelves and issued an apology to the University community. I am pleased to report that SSI has since taken steps to prevent such merchandise from being included in the bookstore’s inventory.”
Students at the protest expressed their dissatisfaction with President Weisenstein’s email. Many viewed it as a non-apology, and those who attended accused President Weisenstein of “bending the truth.”
At the rally, students brought up two “apologies” that President Weisenstein could be referring to in his email. The first was issued by the official bookstore account, which was published on Friday, Sept. 18 after a student tweeted: “For just a mere $7.99 you can get the ‘perfect female specimen’ from our very own @wcu_boookstore!”
In response, the bookstore said: “We apologize for any offense this may have caused. We have removed the 6in ‘inflate-a-date’ from the sales floor.”
The second “apology” President Weisenstein could be talking about was an email sent by the SSI management to a select amount of people, including Dr. Lisa Ruchti, Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program, and Alicia Hahn-Murphy, Director of the Women’s Center.
According to the students at the protest, both of these were insufficient apologies. The bookstore Twitter is followed by 658 people, so students declared that the Twitter apology was not enough.
Irissa Baxter, graduate assistant for Women’s and Gender Studies, explained that the email to Dr. Ruchti and Hahn-Murphy was problematic because it was “blasé” and only apologized to a couple of faculty members, not the student body.
The rally may be over, but students are moving forward with their plans to demand accountability and a public apology from President Weisenstein and the university.
On Thursday, Sept. 24, students will stage a sit-in at President Weisenstein’s office at 9 a.m., with their hope being that the disturbance will cause the university to publicly acknowledge why the inflatable doll situation was harmful.
The inflate a date is hilarious. Here’s a link to YouTube:
https://youtu.be/Z_cCwnfiC7w
Now I can see why good comedians have decided to bypass college campuses because some students don’t know a joke when its hits them in the head. The argument that this gag doll seriously promotes violence or the objectification of women (but there is also a male version) is frivolous and preposterous. There are so many things wrong in the world. Get a real cause.