GRANTHAM, New Hampshire — Texas Governor Rick Perry wasn’t expecting to be asked sexually explicit questions while he spoke at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire — but that’s exactly what happened. One student asked the governor if he would have anal sex in exchange for $102 million in campaign contributions.
According to The Dartmouth, senior Emily Sellers asked the question about anal sex; freshman Timothy Messen accused the governor of comparing homosexuals to alcoholics.
Many event attendees were offended by the questions.
In a Facebook status, Dartmouth College Democrats President Spencer Blair said, “Some students chose to undermine this event by asking the governor very explicit questions, preventing a productive and engaging discourse about pressing policy issues from taking place. While I find Governor Perry’s social (and fiscal) policy vision for our country to be quite reprehensible, the questions aimed at [him] about various sexual acts were unnecessary and inappropriate, and they represented Texas very poorly.”
Ben Packer, a sophomore at Dartmouth, wrote the sexually-explicit questions and passed them out on flyers — campus reform obtained a copy.
The flyers said, “In 2002, you supported Texas’s anti-sodomy law. Do you [Rick Perry] dislike bootysex because the peeny goes in where the poopy comes out?”
They also said, “I know you have been very strong on all foreign policy issues, including Somali pirates, but what is your stance on butt pirates?”
Dartmouth College Republicans President Michelle Knesbach told The Dartmouth, “They were phrased in incredibly insulting ways, and I’m horrified. We allow people to ask policy-driven questions, but when they’re phrased in an insulting manner, we try to avoid that, because it just detracts from the overall political discourse we can have on campus.”
But Patrick has continued to defend his questions, but admitted that they did not achieve the desired effect.
He told the college paper, “I think the desired effect was to point out that their political discussion is not meaningful. Since the event organizers knew what we were doing before it happened, they sort of controlled the lens through which the questions were viewed. The questions – they’re funny, right? I think they’re funny. I think a lot of people think that they’re funny, but since the event had control over the framing of the questions, nobody in the audience laughed. They booed.”
Follow Kristin on Twitter @KristinBTate.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.