I am writing regarding the CHC sponsored "Screw Your Roommate" party which is taking place on Friday, November 13th. I want to explicitly state that after talking with one officer of CHC, I do not have an objection to the party itself. I do, however, have a large objection with the vauge and (to some) offensive way in which the party has been advertised. Thisletter jointly serves as a voicing of that objection, and an attempt to inform people going to this party of what it actually is intended to be.

As was explained to me by a CHC officer, the party, as ideally concieved of, should work as follows: You set your friends up on blind dates before the party. The party itself simply serves as something to do for people while on their blind dates. So the premise is that you fix your roommate or friend up on a blind date, and they then go to the party. And what follows from this is that because blind dates are always nerveracking, CHC decided to title the party: "Screw Your Roommate."

As I stated eariler, I'm not voicing an objection to the party itself.I'm objecting to the irresponsible and dangerous way in which this partyhas been advertised. I, for one, had to seek a CHC officer out to determine what the party actually consisted of. Before speaking with them, I had simply wandered campus seeing signs with "Screw Your Roommate," and; "Who says Friday the 13th is unlucky?" When I questioned others, they had just as little information.

The power advertising cannot be denied in these situations. A person, other than CHC officers and members, going into this party knows two things about it. The first is how people talk about it. The second is how it's been advertised to them. (In other words, what message does the advertising send to them.) If people don't know what the party is because no one else they've talked to does, then they can only know about it through the advertising.

If what has been advertised to them is that it's called "Screw Your Roommate" and that the slogan is about getting lucky on the 13th, I don't think it's a leap to say that CHC would be creating an atmosphere which is dangerous to say the least. The advertisments are as such, and I believe that it may be the case that CHC has begun to create such an atmosphere.

I want to explicitly state that I am not accusing CHC of deliberatly promoting an atmosphere which condones sexual assault at their party. This is not my claim. My claim is that through irresponsible advertising, CHC has *begun* to move towards an atmosphere of expected sexual gratification, which *begins* to move into an atmosphere which, in our current culture of injustices, condones sexual assault.

Some may call this conclusion extreme, but remember that this party falls on the wake of sexual assault awareness week. If nothing else, CHC is guilty of discounting the importance of the struggle to raise awareness of these issues, due to not explicitly avoiding the creation of these atmospheres through its advertising.

Furthermore, I know that a number of people were offended by the blantently irresponsible adversting. In the same space in Chase Hall where a row of T-shirts which tells stories of sexual assault are hanging, are CHC's posters which can be understood to advertise an atmosphere which begins to approach one of sexual assault. I don't think anyone who takes offence at this juxtoposition is overreacting. I simply think CHC did something wrong.

What I hope is now apparent is that the large majority of people who attend a campus-wide party have not been involved in planning it, and thus can only know about it through how it is advertised and how others know of it. If most people don't know what to think of it, and the advertising suggests screwing and getting lucky, the party can quickly become something different than it was intended to be. In the future, I would recomend that CHC and all campus organizations take much more care in determining what message they are sending to students with their advertising. Make it important. As a more general principle - do not allow your party advertisments to imply an enviornment which begins to promote an atmosphere of expected sexual gratification. Many students had been working intensly through last week to demonstrate why this is a bad thing. Please listen to them and take them seriously.