‘Content rider’ shapes events

When the cast of Fall Follies took to the Massey Performing Arts Center stage in October 2008, they had no clue how the audience, which included students, faculty and parents, would take their sketches. The live variety show is known for pushing boundaries, but one sketch in particular may have crossed the line.

The sketch involved a couple students cracking “that’s what she said” jokes. The punch line, popularized by “Wayne’s World” and, more recently, “The Office,” is typically a response to an accidental double entendre spoken by someone else. In the case of the Follies sketch, one student kept getting it wrong, using the phrase after any statement, not just ones with sexual double-meanings.

“I think the problem with that sketch was that it got carried away on stage,” explained Program Board president Amber Garner. Complaints about the sketch led to it being removed from the Follies DVD, but further sanctions were possible because of the student affairs content rider.

The rider, titled “Belmont University Standard Rider to Agreement for Speaker/Artists’ Services” is a page-long document outlining what cannot be said or done while on stage at a Belmont sponsored event. The list includes “actions demeaning the dignity and beauty of human sexuality,” blasphemy, profanity and promotion of drug, alcohol or tobacco use.

According to Henderson Hill, assistant director of student activities, the rider was created to make outside speakers and artists aware of Belmont’s standards.

“When I bring outside people on campus, this is the stuff they have to adhere to,” Hill said. “Our university makes no apologies for who we are and what we stand for.”

In terms of student performances, Hill considers these events to be “learning labs” where students are given experience in dealing with the legal and ethical standards of the venue.

“For me it’s not so much of micro-managing or not wanting students to have the freedom to be creative, it’s you need to learn to be accountable to something,” he said.

University counsel Jason Rogers and representatives of the Office of Student Affairs wrote the rider. According to Hill, it has not been updated since 2003. Some references in the rider, particularly the inclusion of “homosexual acts” in the sexual conduct section, have since been excised from the student code of conduct. It is unclear if the rider will be revised to reflect those changes.

For Belmont students, breaking the terms of the rider can mean disqualification from a competition like the showcase series and perhaps even judicial sanctions based on the disciplinary section of the Bruin Guide. Although Hill admits that punishment depends on how far a performer goes and that he relies on complaints by audience members or student leaders for many performances that don’t fall under Program Board or SGA.

Musicians and speakers aren’t the only performers required to sign the rider. Films and theater performances also fall under the purview of the contract, but, according to Garner, are given some educational and artistic leeway.

At least one recent play, “Arabian Nights,” included a disclaimer to warn audience members about language and sexual situations that would otherwise be banned by the rider.

Similarly, Health Services screened the movie “Thank You For Smoking” despite frequent profanity and sexual situations without complaint because it was part of The Great American Smokeout, a week of anti-smoking events tied to the American Cancer Society’s national program to bring awareness to the health risks of smoking.

Movies that are purely for entertainment, however, are a different story.

“We showed ‘Casino Royale’ and things like that,” Garner said. “It’s a movie, so we can push it a little more, but we’re not going to show an ‘Rated R’ movie.”

Despite the rules, both Hill and Garner stressed that their goal isn’t to hamper students’ creativity. In the case of the “that’s what she said” sketch, Garner brushed it off as an overreaction.

“My favorite part of the mission statement of Belmont is ‘student centered’,” Garner said, “When we start caring too much about that one parent who gets offended or that one staffer that doesn’t understand the joke, then I think it maybe gets taken too far.”