Kokomo, Indiana- Indiana University is investigating whether it was proper for a freshman student to use her dorm on the Bloomington campus as the setting for nude photos posted on the Internet.
Dean of Students Richard McKaig today said the girl potentially used the school’s space, and possibly its name, without authorization. The girl hasn’t been identified, but it’s the talk of the 38,000-student campus after the Indiana Daily Student broke the story this week about the adult Web site.
The girl, who goes by the pseudonym “teen Keira,” lives on the seventh floor of Briscoe-Shoemaker.
“To be perfectly honest, at first everyone was talking about it, logging on to the site and we were embarrassed because it was a girl on (our) floor,” said Amanda Gosser, a student who serves as a floor governor in the residence hall and knows the girl.
The Website has been up about a month.
“It died down. Now that it’s brought back up again, people are trying to support her, even if they don’t agree with it.”
It’s a pay-to-view site requiring $24.95 a month, and there are no obvious images of IU, although she does say on the site that it’s “a few pix of me in my dorm room.”
McKaig, the dean of students, said he checked with campus police but determined the investigation should steer towards the office of student ethics instead.
“We have reason to think what we believe to be university space was used,” McKaig said. Her Web page wasn’t produced under university jurisdiction, but is arranged by a Raleigh, N.C. company called Orange Image. A phone call left with that company wasn’t immediately returned today.
McKaig said he hasn’t looked at the Website himself and would leave it to staff or peers who are part of the campus judicial system to make a recommendation. She could face a reprimand up to expulsion.
“We have to make sure we act carefully and don’t overstep our bounds,” McKaig said.
The IU student told the campus newspaper that news coverage of the site has been blown out of proportion. “I don’t feel it’s porn,” she told the IDS. “You can call it an adult site, but there’s no intercourse or oral sex. There’s not anyone else in the pictures with me. I’m not even fully nude.”
Casey Cox, a senior and the student body president, blames the attention on an adult film shot on the campus two years ago.
“I don’t think it’s news really,” Cox said. “I’m sure there are multiple university settings in which things like this go on. Run a ‘Google’ search and you’ll find other universities that can lay claim to the same thing. I wonder what this free advertising is doing to the site.”