Probing into the sordid, tumultuous history of pornography at Yale.

Linda Lovelace knew only one form of therapy: the blowjob.

“Deep throat,” to be exact.

A full house of paying customers looked on intently as Linda performed her unique mode of treatment, over and over again. Does this sound like a bunch of sexually frustrated men and the occasional shameless celebrity (read: Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee Wee Herman) at a creepy adult theater? That’s what I thought too.

In fact, the audience was all Yalies, circa 1973, packed tightly into the Sterling Law Auditorium, the same grand venue where you could spend every Wednesday morning listening to Alexander Nemerov expound on post-Renaissance art. The night’s entertainment: Deep Throat, a feature film about a woman whose clitoris is located in the back of her throat. Yes, actually.

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What might today pass as another Pundits’ prank was, at one time, a campus regularity; that is, the Yale Law School Film Society’s (YLSFS) screenings of X-rated movies for the Yale community during the ’60s and ’70s. The YLSFS, now defunct, was an official school group that brought together law students with a common passion for cinema. The group planned film showings; hosted cocktail parties with distinguished guests; and organized film festivals on Yale’s campus. YLSFS had ties to the movie industry that resulted in pre-release screenings—The French Connection, among others—and many renowned Hollywood figures, such as Metropolis director Fritz Lang, visited Yale as guests of the student group. But charging students to see a full-length porno? And in a school auditorium? These so-called “Porn Nights” might seem odd or inappropriate by today’s standards, but to former Yale students, the screenings were simply a product of the time.

“It’s hard to recreate that era,” explained Aviam Soifer, TC ’69, LAW ’72, current Dean of the University of Hawaii Law School and former YLSFS member. “There was a general ‘breaking out’ in the late ’60s; it was about defiance of authority,” he said. Besides, in Soifer’s opinion, “Yale Law School would have been among the last places to crack down on a student group,” even if that group were broadcasting X-rated images to the Yale community.

Chris Goodrich, JE ’78, who attended multiple YLSFS X-rated screenings as an undergraduate, recalled similar attitudes among students at the time: “Remember, Porn Nights happened decades ago. Porn wasn’t seen the same way back then. The screenings were raw entertainment. After days and days of studying and being ‘in your mind,’ the porn was a relief.”

While Porn Nights could relieve stress today just as they did forty years ago, there are several factors that explain porn’s relative disappearance from Yale on an institutional level. Tristan Taormino, an award-winning sex educator, author, columnist with The Village Voice, and filmmaker, is not surprised that on-campus screenings of pornographic films are no longer commonplace. Taormino partly attributes the disappearance of pornographic movies on-campus to a change in the medium of porn itself: “Porn from the ’70s bears little resemblance to the porn you find today. Back then, it was story-driven; it was shot on film; it was just different.”

Taormino believes politics also plays a role in the decrease of school-sponsored porn-related events. “The conservative right is well mobilized to jump on those sorts of things,” she told me. “Sometimes when I visit colleges, there is extreme controversy that a pornographer is on campus.”

Such porn-related controversy ensued last year at the University of Maryland, College Park, when the college’s student union sponsored a screening of award-winning director Ali Joone’s 2008 feature length porno Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge. The planned screening prompted Maryland State Senator Andrew P. Harris, a Republican, to propose legislation that would have stripped the university of 424 million dollars of public funding should the school continue its sponsorship of the event.

Though the University of Maryland cancelled the screening after Sen. Harris’ proposal, various student groups nevertheless proceeded with planning the event, and over 200 students, staff, and media were in attendance on Apr. 6, 2009 for Pirates II and a panel on First Amendment rights. Other screenings of Pirates II have been conducted on college campuses across the country without significant dispute, both at public institutions like the University of California Los Angeles and private universities such as Carnegie Mellon.

That viewing pornography in groups at college remains popular today is a testament to porn’s lasting appeal and its continued presence as “a form of pop culture,” as Taormino told me. At Yale, a group of recent graduates founded an on-campus club whose express purpose was to watch porn and eat fried chicken. Formed by James Ponsoldt, MC ’01, (his club alias was Sweet Jimmy the Benevolent Pimp), and three friends, “Porn ‘n’ Chicken” gained popularity on campus and quickly ballooned to around 100 members. “The Yale administration was pretty cool about the club, and some professors even came to our meetings,” Ponsoldt told The New Yorker in a 2002 interview. Porn ‘n’ Chicken even planned on making a full length porno called “The StaXXX.” (For better or worse, the film was never made, and Porn ‘n’ Chicken is no longer active today.)

Though neither the YLSFS-sponsored Porn Nights nor Porn ‘n’ Chicken’s group viewings are still available options for students looking to take a break from their schoolwork, there are still instances of current Yale students coming together to watch pornographic films.

Bea Koch, BR ’12, described an occasion last year when a friend screened Pirates II: “We watched it as a big group, and it was really fun,” she said. Koch also supports the idea of more on-campus screenings of X-rated pornos, though she did note that she would only go in certain situations.

Jonah Quinn, SM ’12, is another student who sees value in pornography: “I think porn is really great. It allows people to see what exactly makes them happy, and once they can do that, they can carry that over to their personal lives.” When asked if he would support an official on-campus screening of a porn movie, Quinn responded emphatically. “Absolutely. I think it would be extremely honest of the university. Some people might laugh at the movie and others might learn from it, but either way, it starts a dialogue about a subject that is not often spoken of.”

Taormino, who is also a panelist of this year’s Sex Week at Yale discussion on Sex, Gender, & Photography, agrees on the importance of discussing pornography and its role in society and culture. “Porn is a valid course of study—people can apply all different levels of critical thinking to it. I’m not for any kind of censorship of porn, but especially not on college campuses.”

That on-campus education and discussion about pornography are not altogether common seems to run against general logic, considering that all of the people I spoke with believed either that porn has some inherent value or granted that people have a insatiable curiosity about porn.

“I wouldn’t call porn art,” Koch said, “but I don’t think it’s just smut either.”

“Porn is interesting,” Quinn told me. “It’s unique.”

And Soifer, while admitting that he did not like the X-rated films that were shown on Porn Nights, does believe “people came to the screenings because they were curious.”

Peoples’ interest and curiosity about pornography, it seems, is no less intense today as it was 40 years ago when Porn Nights were in full swing. If anything, YLSFS-sponsored screenings of movies like Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door simply offered Yalies—all Yalies—an avenue to explore pornography as an element in their own lives.

Relating to me his strongest memory of Porn Nights, Goodrich recalled always seeing “one long-haired, mustachioed guy from the YLSFS, who I imagine is a partner in a major law firm somewhere these days, nearing retirement, with a multi-million dollar nest egg.” For him, like for so many others, Porn Nights were a momentary escape from the academic grind that is Yale. And I think we could all use a little of that.