sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/02/19/MN81245.DTL
A student-run class on male sexuality was suspended Friday after published allegations that class members had an "orgy" at a party and went to a strip club where an instructor had sex on stage. The Windsor Star in Canada gave the story equal billing with President Bush's visit to Japan and global warming. UC Berkeley spokeswoman Marie Felde said the class was suspended after the student instructors failed to show up for a meeting Friday to explain what happened. The class belongs to a campus program called De-Cal (for Democratic Education) with student-run courses that provide credit for graduation. The party came after a semester-end class outing to a strip club last semester, she said. Some students at the party also took anonymous Polaroid pictures of their genitalia in a bathroom for a game in which participants try to match the photos with the person, she said. Student Jessica McMahon told the paper that one trip organized to a gay strip club last semester ended up with one of the strippers getting fired. Such activities "are not part of the approved course curriculum," Felde said. After the campus paper ran the allegations Friday, the faculty sponsor of the course, women's studies Professor Caren Kaplan, called a meeting with the student coordinators of the class, Felde said. The students failed to show up, and Kaplan suspended the class pending further investigation. The uproar has cast a cloud over the popular De-Cal program, which offers dozens of classes ranging from integrative medicine and Japanese literature to the Beatles and blackjack.
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