CV NEWS FEED // For nearly a decade, students at the University of Notre Dame have been quietly fighting for something radical in today’s digital age: a pornography-free campus network. This year, that effort has been reignited with fresh hope and leadership.
During its annual White Ribbon Against Pornography (WRAP) Week in March, the Irish Rover reported, the student group Students for Child-Oriented Policy (SCOP) launched a new petition urging the university to block pornographic websites on campus Wi-Fi. The appeal, signed by more than 600 students as of the Rover’s article publication, asks university president Father Robert Dowd, C.S.C., to implement a campus-wide filter.
“My hope and prayer is that there will be no need for further labor in this end, that President Dowd will push this change through the admin and porn will be removed from access on University internet,” said SCOP co-president Theo Austin.
This isn’t the first time SCOP has fought for this cause. In 2018, a petition led by the same group gathered more than 2,400 signatures, including students, alumni, faculty, and staff. That petition was ultimately rejected by then-President Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., who offered individual opt-in filters instead.
“An ‘opt-in’ filter would teach that degrading others, especially women, is a matter of individual choice,” SCOP responded at the time. “It would say to students, ‘If you choose to go the extra mile to respect women, we support you.’”
In 2023, two student senators, John Soza and Ayden Ellis, brought the filter proposal to the student government. After intense debate, the proposal was voted down 11-24 in an anonymous ballot.
Notre Dame’s earlier efforts sparked action elsewhere. In 2019, the Catholic University of America (CUA) implemented a pornographic content filter after one of its students read about SCOP’s failed campaign. John Garvey, the university president at the time, embraced the initiative, stating, “Catholic universities exist to teach students, among other things, how to live a life of virtue.”
Garvey, now a visiting law professor at Notre Dame, described the CUA filter as “fairly uncontroversial among the students.”
“I was delighted to do what they asked,” he added. “I’d had it in mind myself, but their request made it all that much easier.” Under his leadership, CUA became one of several Catholic institutions, alongside Franciscan University of Steubenville and Christendom College, to block pornography access on school networks.
Notre Dame’s own policy on technology use explicitly forbids accessing or distributing obscene or pornographic material through university resources — unless required for academic purposes. SCOP argues the administration’s refusal to enforce this policy undermines the credibility of the university’s moral framework.
“Our University’s own policy acknowledges this danger of pornography, condemning its access on campus using any Notre Dame technology resources, including the campus internet,” the petition states.
It adds later, “The University has refused to take any steps to enforce this policy prohibiting porn. We ask that the University rectify this so that their policy may actually affect what it dictates.”
This year’s WRAP Week included several other events. SCOP hosted a lecture by Josh Haskell, a Notre Dame alumnus and founder of Ethos National, a group helping men overcome pornography addiction. The week concluded with a screening of Sound of Freedom, a film exposing the horrors of child sex trafficking — a reminder of the broader societal harms connected to the porn industry.
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