As reported previously by XBiz, AB Films showed Digital Playground’s swashbuckling sex tale “Pirates” at the CMU McConomy Auditorium on Nov. 20, in a move extensively covered by local media.
More than 3,000 students showed up for about 1,000 seats at the venue, where the film was screened on three separate occasions to sold-out crowds.
“This isn't something completely unusual,” Andrew Moore, CMU’s activity’s board president, said of the event. “Many universities do similar things.”
Moore is technically correct, though no school club has yet to achieve the kind of success as AB Films. The University of San Diego student council, for example, voted in October to place a ban on sexually explicit programming on the university’s student-run closed circuit television station, and a fraternity at Chico State University was suspended earlier this year for allegedly participating in a porn shoot.
Despite obvious controversy, CMU officials released a statement earlier this week that said while the film’s showing was not “consistent with our values as a university community, it is not prohibited by university policy.”
Interestingly, both reports by local news station KDKA only interviewed one protestor, freshman Femi Akintolo, who runs a woman’s group on the campus.
“I don't feel that the campus should take on the responsibility of providing students with pornography,” Akintolo told KDKA reporter Marty Griffin. “I mean if they need to watch that, they need to do that on their own.”
Moore said the student activities board would be open to listening to student complaints and is holding a forum next week for anyone to speak on the issue. If the students don’t want adult films screened on campus, they won’t have it, Moore said.
AB Films’ Chair Chloe Connelly doesn’t think that will happen, however.
“I don't think I've ever seen people so excited about a movie on campus,” Connelly said.
