Can I Kiss You???

Patrick Gross

Dr. Ellis

Understanding Lit.

Even 1

Can I Kiss You?

Going to the "Can I Kiss You?" lecture by Mike Dormitz, I was very hesitant to go and thought it would be such a joke. Could i be anymore wrong, for it was a really comic but intellectual  lecture. He made it many good points and was able to relate it back to out Jesuit education.

Throughout his whole lecture, Mike Dormitz made sure to get his audience involved and to explain more than one scenarios. I was one of his volunteers in the beginning, where at the time i still thought this whole lecture would be a joke, so indeed i treated it like one. Soon after I realized he made many good points about how we should respect one another enough to give our partner the choice before we try making the decision for them. He talked a good deal about how most of us stereotypically think these situations should and usually do go. He would play out the worst scenario that most of us would thought would happen if we did such a thing, but was able to show us how it's not as terrible as we thought. 

In the middle of the lecture, Mike throws at us the scenario of a guy trying to get a girl drunk so he may "take advantage of her". Still asking the audience what we would do with this situation and keeping the audience involved. He later tells us how his sister has been a "survivor" of rape. He mentioned so much but his main point with his sister is that we have to me more "open the door" to those who may be "survivors" as well and let it be more easy for anyone who is to be open with there experience.  By "open the door" mike wanted us to reach out to at least three loved ones and tell them that let them know that we are there for them if any one has ever touched them or sexually assaulted them without there consent and that they "deserved to talk to someone about it and let it out". This whole part of the lecture was very deep and heart hitting, while opening our eyes to this in a extremely different way than we are used to.

His point at the end is that he does this all over the country for a multitude more of Jesuit and religious school because it relates back to what these organizations are teaching us. For the Jesuit teachings of the whole person; body, mind, and soul. His lecture tells us that we need to respect each others' bodies by not taking advantage of others. Along with this we need to also help out our friends from not being taken advantaged of or especially from the chance of rape. He teaches of ways to help them out without completely interfering with others lives. Mike also teaches us to respect each others' minds, by giving our partners the choice before taking action. This is why we should always communicate with out partners this way respecting them and giving them equality.

From going to this I was extremely thankful that I was dragged to this lecture for my FE class. I learned different ways to approach situations and how to prevent misinterpretations.