South Texas College of Law, The Annotation (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 14, No. 1, Summer, 1985 Page: 1 of 12
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South
Texas
¡College
of Law
The Annotation
Non Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Houston, Texas
Permit 8451
Volume XIV, No.
1303 San Jacinto, Houston, Texas 77002
Summer, 1985
Steinem Packs House
By Vicki Bailey
"The women's movement is the
only one where we grow more
radical with age," exclaimed
feminist spokesperson Gloria
Steinem to a standing room only
crowd in the South Texas College of
Law Auditorium.
Ms. Steinem's lecture on por-
nography, and the first amendment,
held on May 20, was sponsored by
Women in Law and the Student
Public Interest Law Group. The
standing-room-only crowd consisted
of several local dignitaries including
Mayor Kathy Whitmire, Council-
woman Eleanor Tinsley, and former
state representative and guber-
natorial candidate Frances "Sissy"
Farenthold. Also in attendance were
numerous members of Houston's
feminist community.
"We have just begun," she said,
"to sort out our feelings and defini-
tions. Pornography is today where
rape was ten years ago. We were
then trying to explain that rape was
not sex, it was violence; and we are
now trying to explain that pornog-
raphy is not sex, it is violence."
Pornography must first be
separated from erotica, Ms. Steinem
said. The origins of the two words
are instructive, she explained. Por-
nography comes from pome, mean-
ing "female slavery". Thus she said,
pornography is writing about female
slavery. In contract, erotica comes
from eros, meaning love. This has
connotations of free will, equal
power, and pleasure, Ms. Steinem
noted.
Much of her philosophy comes
from what Ms. Steinem terms "the
property theory" of women and
children. In prehistory, she claims,
conception was not understood.
Societies then were "more equalita-
rian and perhaps even female-
dominated," she said. The act of
giving birth was mysterious. It was
worshipped and imitated by men.
"It was taken as proof of women's
superiority," Ms. Steinem said.
With the understanding of con-
ception came a gradual shift in the
balance of power, she noted. Men
began to claim ownership to par-
ticular children. "They began
gradually to restrict the freedom of
women, at least long enough to
determine paternity, in order to
establish ownership of those
children," Ms. Steinem said.
Societies gradually became patri-
archial, said Ms. Steinem. Women
were viewed as a source of cheap
labor, doing whatever work was not
rewarded in that society, which is the
definition of "women's work", she
said.
This property theory has been
reflected in our laws, Ms. Steinem
claimed. Perhaps only a decade ago,
she said, many states allowed a hus-
band to physically punish his wife.
From this comes "the rule of
thumb", Ms. Steinem noted, as "a
husband was permitted by law, ex-
plicitly, to use a rod no bigger than
his thumb in beating a disobedient
wife."
"The laws about rape also reflect
the property theory," the Ms mag-
azine editor noted. "For only if one
were a virgin, and thus property not
yet owned, or a married woman, and
thus the property of a particular man,
was the prosecution recognized."
Ms. Steinem also believes that the
property theory is reflected in acts of
domestic violence. "The most dan-
gerous place for an American
Steinem continued on pg 10
South Texas Law Journal 1985
Editorial Board and Assistants
Photo by W.L. Yanger
Front row (left to right): Mary C. Bray, Patricia Lynn Brooks, Daniel C. Conley, Beatriz McKey, Mary E.
Henslee, Felicia E. Kinstlinger, Maria S. Chapa, Charles D. Rusciano, Anita Ponder, Sondra Kaighen. Back row
(left to right): Holly Williamson, Kevin H Berry, Jan Riley, W. Scott Brown, David Terry, Prof. Robert S. Marsel,
Faculty Advisor, Mary-Ann Bellatti, Editor-in-Chief, James L. Shepherd, Editor-in-Chief, Sharon J. Hemphill,
Robert Rice, Mark Font, Ron S. Raincy, Susan Septimus.
Photo by Maria Chapa
Ms. Magazine publisher and noted feminist Gloria Steinem spoke to a
standing-room-only crowd May20,1985at STCL. Listeners included Mayor
Kathy Whitmire.
woman," she said, "is not in the
streets, statistically speaking, its' in
her own home." Rarely, though,
before the 1970's was wifebeating
punished or attended to by police,
she said.
Ms. Steinem noted a connection
between racism and sexism. "There
has always been a very profound
parallel between women and any
other groups of human beings
marked by race or ethnicity as in-
Student Pleads Guilty;
Given Stiffest Penalty
By Gordon Brooks
Assistant Editor
A South Texas College of Law
student received a failing grade of 55
and will have a permanent censure in
his STCL administrative file as a
result of action taken against him by
an STCL professor in the spring
The student, whose name will be
withheld for policy reasons, was
found guilty under section 7.03 of
the Honor Code. This section states
that, "a student commits a second-
ary violation if he represents as his
own academic work the work of
another without acknowledging the
source."
"A Bill of Complaint was filed by
the complaining professor pursuant
to the Honor Code," said Chief
Prosecutor Jim Brock. "After
researching the allegation, I then
determined that there were sufficient
facts to proceed and filed a formal
Bill of Complaint with the Honor
Court which set out all of the facts,
issues and name of the accuser.
"The complaint, which was signed
by myself and the accusing profes-
sor, alleged the student turned in a
final paper for a seminar course
which he took in the fall of 1984 that
was plagiarized from a published
legal article," Brock said.
"That article was not carried by
either the STCL library or the Uni-
versity of Houston library but the
professor nevertheless recognized it
as one which he had seen before,"
he said.
After the formal complaint was
filed the Chief Justice of the Honor
Court then signed the order setting
the pre-trial hearing for April 9,
1985. At that mandatory pre-trial
hearing the defendant student chose
to represent himself and pled guilty
to all of the allegations leveled
against him in the formal complaint.
The Honor Court accepted the
defendant's guilty plea and, upon a
motion by the SBA through the
Chief Prosecutor Brock, proceeded
to impose the appropriate sanctions
under Chapter Eight of the Honor
Code.
The penalty invoked by the
Honor Court is specifically set out in
section 9.03 of the Honor Code,
"Letter of Censure".
That section reads:
"A person adjudged guilty of a
secondary violation of this code
and assessed a sanction under
this section shall:
(a) receive a letter of censure
over the signatures of the
Chief Justice of the Honor
Court and the Dean of the
South Texas College of
Law, containing a sum-
mary of the facts, the ver-
dict of the Honor Court,
and setting out the possi-
bility of more severe disci-
plinary sanctions in the
event of subsequent finding
Honor Court cont- on pg 10
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Yanger, William L. South Texas College of Law, The Annotation (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 14, No. 1, Summer, 1985, newspaper, 1985; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth144434/m1/1/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting South Texas College of Law.