A Conversio Virium member after a caning demonstration at Columbia University.

“Sometimes my friends and I stop each other mid-sentence and say, ‘Oh my god, you guys. We go to Harvard. This is so weird,’” Maria, a junior, said recently over Skype chat.

Harvard had been Maria’s dream school for years. (She requested a pseudonym, but not because she’s not proud of her alma mater.) A valedictorian of her New England public high school, she got in on the basis of a 4.0 GPA and started working toward an English major. Last year, she began looking around for some extracurricular activities to enrich her college experience. There were more than 400 student groups to choose from. Maria chose a group called Munch. Her goal was to meet new people, to explore something new, maybe to release some of the pressure that comes with trying to compete in an intimidating hothouse of rampant overachievement.

Maria is petite, with honey-blonde hair and brown eyes. They widened as she ticked off a few of the areas she hoped to explore in her free time: “Bondage, handcuffs, ice play...”

Maria is, she said, less a masochist than a submissive. “So a lot of taking orders and stuff like that,” she explained. “I’m really into the whole exhibitionist thing, semi-public places, mirrors...” In addition to educational meetings on campus, Munch members have occasionally gotten together in private to “play.” Since joining, Maria’s had a chance to explore some of her fantasies. “I’ve been hit with a riding crop, a belt, a paddle, canes, a flogger ... floggers are my favorite.”

The popularity of 50 Shades of Grey has accelerated a mainstreaming of the BDSM subculture already underway—the initials stand for bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism—and the trend has been especially pronounced in our more elite institutions of higher learning. Columbia has a BDSM group. So do Tufts, MIT, Yale and the University of Chicago. Brown, UPenn and Cornell have hosted BDSM educators for on-campus seminars entitled “The Freedom of Kink” and “Kink for All.” It looks like conservatives who have long viewed the Ivy League a bastion of depravity may have a point after all.

But some young members of such groups are finding the subculture is offering them more of an education than they expected, confronting them with serious issues involving consent, disclosure, anonymity, sexual violence, guilt and innocence, crime and punishment.

While the scene’s mantra—“safe, sane and consensual”—is heard so often it might as well be translated into needlepoint, violations of these maxims are common. In the last year, hundreds of people have come forward to describe the abuse they’ve suffered within the scene. The victims are mostly women, and like 50 Shades’ fictional 22-year-old Anastasia Steele, many are also young, submissive and uncertain about their boundaries.

In December, Victoria (not her real name), a 20-year-old English major at an Ivy League school, had decided to skip reading period, apply more makeup than usual and venture on her own to a kinky meet-upshe had read about on FetLife, a social networking service for fetishists. Victoria didn’t have any experience with submissive sex, but she had been drawn to it for years; she sometimes had fantasies about dungeons or about being restrained or embarrassed, and she recalled family trips to Medieval Times having given her an unusual erotic charge.

The meeting was fun. Victoria had interesting conversations about neurobiology and religion and, of course, about kinky sex. It was near the end of the evening when a man walked in whom she recognized; he had tried to form an S&M club on her campus a few years before. Eric had a doughy, impish face and slicked-back hair, and he wore his cell phone in a carrier on his hip.

A week later the two went to a “play-party.” After some reluctance, Victoria agreed to negotiate some tentative participation, defining safe words and off-limits actions. But once the two were alone in a corner, she said, Eric put a knife to her throat and began groping her. Victoria was shaken, but she couldn’t help doubting herself. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be, she figured.

The next day, when Eric asked her to send him an email stating what had happened and describing it as consensual, she complied. “At the time, I felt like this must be normal,” she said. “Now it seems obvious he was just building up a defense.”

The BDSM scene can be violent by nature. Physical and psychological power, and the lack thereof, are at the heart of the erotic experience. As a result, sexual assault can be harder to define and harder to prove. But that’s not to say it doesn’t happen. Indeed, awareness of the problem seems to be growing, and controversies around the issue have been roiling the tight-knit fetish community all year.

Kitty Stryker and Maggie Mayhem were up late one night, chatting online. Both are known as sex-positive activists and celebrities within the sadomasochism world. That night, they began to swap sexual-assault stories and realized the experience was more common than either had known. The pair began collecting similar tales online, and it wasn’t long before they had amassed more than 300 anecdotes. The stories ranged from more benign assaults (unwanted groping) to tales of being drugged and raped. Many of the victims described abusers who were well-known members of the community, people who hosted parties or helped to organize the scene.

“What we found is that the abuse was systematic,” said Ms. Stryker, who regularly goes by a pseudonym. “People had these stories, but when they went to report them to community leaders, they were dismissed as drama. Not only that, but people were ostracized for reporting. It becomes clear how easy it is for an abuser to swoop in on a newbie.”

Meanwhile, Andy, a 24-year-old law student who lives in New York City, also began collecting abuse stories, publishing them directly on FetLife. Andy is something of a New York scene fixture, known for throwing massive BDSM galas that include such attractions as “glitter bathtubs” and fake-blood tableaux modeled on the TV series Dexter. A transgendered male, he quickly collected hundreds of anecdotes, many from fellow New Yorkers, some of which called out abusers by FetLife username. “I knew the people they were naming,” Andy said. “There were party organizers and influential people that users were saying had done horrible things to them,” he said. Publishing these accounts on the social network had a galvanizing effect. Every time someone “loved” a post it showed up on their feed. Soon, everyone on the site knew who was being accused of what—though they didn’t always know the identities of the accusers.

When FetLife employees caught wind of the posts, they began removing usernames. Employees warned that lodging criminal accusations against users violated the site’s terms of service. CEO John Baku then got involved, stating that he was sorry for everyone who’d experienced abuse and suggesting that victims go to the police. (Mr. Baku declined to comment for this article.) The CEO’s involvement spurred hundreds of comments from users, many siding with the site’s administrators and warning of an epidemic of false accusations. Others backed Andy, arguing that the community should police itself and support victims. BDSM is illegal in some states, and many practitioners do not feel comfortable going to the police.

“The types of abuse that happen when you are new and vulnerable are happening to us now,” Andy said. It was a fall afternoon, and he was sitting in an East Village cafe, wearing a fedora, white suspenders and a black Janelle Monae shirt. “There are people in the New York scene that everyone knows are bad news, and people tell you but no one does anything about it. Since FetLife has emerged, we’ve had this giant influx of young people coming into the scene who haven’t been around long enough to hear the whispers.”

As word spread about the multiple accounts of consent violation, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF) launched a survey. “We haven’t closed it yet, but so far we have 5,000 responses, and over 30 percent of them had have their previously negotiated limit violated, which I think is horrific,” said spokesperson Susan Wright. “There is still confusion between consensual BDSM and assault.”

As the debate around naming abusers wore on, FetLife stuck to its policy.

Things got more complicated when Mr. Baku himself was accused. The story came to light on the personal blog of a woman named called SinShine Love. “Let it be clear,” she wrote, “the reason John sees no problem with any of this rape apologist bullshit is because he has a foggy ass notion of consent and acceptable behavior himself. And because he personally benefits from people like me staying silent.”

Mr. Baku issued an apology for his behavior on FetLife, stating that he was drunk the night in question, though he didn’t specifically admit to abuse.

“We enforce the idea that you can say no to anything,” said Holli, a leader of Columbia University’s BDSM group, Conversio Virium. “There are a lot of young, inexperienced people that come to us for guidance and an introduction to the scene. A lot of them become easy targets for people to prey on at play parties. Sometimes young people like to say ‘Yes, yes, yes’ to everyone they encounter at a fetish party or event, but if you say ‘yes’ when you mean ‘I’m not so sure about this,’ the lines about whether actual consent was given start to blur.”

Samantha Berstler, a student at Harvard who had studied the scene, supports Conversio Virium but questions the group’s willingness to admit non-students. “Why not just put a big neon sign on the door that says, ‘Vulnerable young nubile college students, many without strong support networks in the city yet, please come take advantage of them?’” she wondered.

Every time she logs into FetLife she sees the same story, Ms. Berstler added. “Someone else I know is writing that a relationship was completely abusive, and of course she was young and a college student and pretty and new.”

Consent is paramount at Harvard’s BDSM group, Munch, said the group’s leader, who asked to be identified as Michael. Right now, the university is considering giving the group its official backing, provided it adopts specific policies to educate members on how to deal with abuse. “We are working on developing standardized policies,” he said. “Right now that mostly exists with the function of an email list—anyone who joins the list gets a spiel.”

Victoria could have used the support of a good student group. After she and Eric broke up, she told her friends about the darker elements of their relationship—how he would repeatedly threaten to rape her and how maybe sometimes what he did actually seemed like rape, and how he once casually suggested he might be a serial killer. She said she had sometimes felt forced into sex acts, including electrocution and “fire play.”

Everyone agreed that this was abuse, but when she talked about reporting it, they waffled.

The NCSF has been working on new community guidelines about what constitutes consent and what doesn’t. Ms. Wright says she’s also been developing an app with FetLife that will direct members who have been abused to the authorities, as well as a new program that helps victims report to the police in general.

Meanwhile, despite FetLife’s best efforts, alleged abusers are still being publicly identified. A tech-savvy member of the BDSM community named MayMay recently developed an app that puts a yellow square around the profile photo of anyone who has been accused of abuse, along with a description of their alleged misdeeds. The yellow square can only be seen within the app, a free download.

After her breakup with Eric, Victoria sought out the help of a therapist and was diagnosed with PTSD. Eventually, she decided to press charges.

“I met a lawyer and we just picked the three most obvious instances of rape,” she recalled. “He said it wouldn’t make sense to file a report of 20 instances. I was worried that if I made the report, Eric would come attack me or kill me, and I didn’t want to put my life in danger unless I was certain something would come of it.” Victoria’s lawyer went to a friend who was a DA and asked what he would do with such a case.

Victoria was sitting in the school library weeks later when she received the email from her lawyer. The DA said he would throw the case out. BDSM scenarios are just too complicated to prosecute, he said.

One afternoon, Michael again met with school administrators about Munch gaining official recognition as a student group. Michael and two other group leaders sat and waited for their turn to be seen. Other student group leaders had arrived late and were wearing shorts. Michael and the other Munch members had worn suits. They were nervous.

The meeting was tense, but Michael felt it went well. “One of the big concerns that they had were issues of consent, and I’m proud to say we did a good job of representing ourselves as a group that takes consent very seriously,” he said. He hopes that Munch can become a leader in larger discussions about sexual abuse on campus, taking its consent-is-paramount model to the “vanilla” world. Harvard will make a determination about the group’s official status at the end of November.

editorial@observer.com

Peregrine Financial Group founder Russell Wasendorf Sr. pleaded guilty to charges that he stole about $200 million from clients at the futures firm. It was initially believed that Mr. Wasendorf would be set free pending sentencing, the judge ordered the fraudster held behind bars pending a determination on the flight risk posed by the Iowa man. Meanwhile, Wasendorf's son, Russell Jr., sued U.S. Bank for allegedly failing to supervise properly the transfer of customer funds.

Lenders to embattled broadband wireless company LightSquared want permission to go after Harbinger Capital, the hedge fund founded by Phil Falcone, in bankruptcy proceedings, The Wall Street Journal says.

A Morgan Stanley infrastructure fund is tripping over the Volcker rule, which dictates how much of its own capital a bank can risk, according to Reuters. Some senior executives have left the firm rather than accept a smaller share of profits.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro is on medical leave, according to The New York Post, and may leave the agency before her term expires in 2014.

Andrew Ross Sorkin relegates the Occupy Wall Street to the dustbin of history, along with the misfits and vagabonds he says diminished the movement.

Harvard grads are earning less than alumni of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, says Bloomberg.

Short sellers have more than doubled their bets against Manchester United since the British soccer club that went public in a U.S. offering this summer, according to the Telegraph (h/t Business Insider).

If you haven't been following, the university said yesterday that nearly half of the 279 students in an undergraduate course—later identified by the Harvard Crimson as Government 1310: Introduction to Congress—were being investigated for academic dishonesty on a take-home final exam.

According to press reports, the inquiry was opened after a teaching fellow, or TF for short, noticed that students collaborated on the exam despite instructions that such collaboration was prohibited, and that some students used "same long, identical strings of words."

But our source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that while collaboration may have been expressly forbidden*, it was widely practiced by students and even teaching fellows.*We've seen a copy of the test, which spells out the policy on collaboration as follows: "The exam is completely open book, open note, open internet, etc. However, in all other regards, this should fall under similar guidelines that apply to in-class exams. More specifically, students may not discuss the exam with others—this includes resident tutors, writing centers,
etc."

"I can personally attest that my TF collaborated on every single exam with me," the student said in an email. "He pointed me in the right direction, gave me some answers, gave me some insights, and some quotes to use."

The source also sent us a review of Introduction to Congress from the university's Q Guide—which compiles students' comments on courses they've taken—and in which a student described seeking help from a teaching fellow on the eve of the final exam. (While we don't have access to the Q Guide, The Crimson reproduces a portion of the review in the article linked above.)

At those office hours were about 15 kids, some of whom were not even in my TFs section. Almost all of them had been awake the entire night, and none of us could figure out what an entire question (worth 20% of the grade) was asking. On top of this, one of the questions asked us about a term that had never been defined in any of our readings and had not been properly defined in class, so the TF had to give us a definition to use for the question.

Take these two anonymous comments for what you will. (You might take them the attempts of entitled adolescents to shift blame, for instance.) And note that we don't know the extent of the collaboration (or plagiarism, or cheating) identified by the university. But from the outside looking in, it's not so hard to imagine a scenario in which students sharing answers thought their behavior was acceptable—because their teaching fellows were supplying the answers in the first place, or because sharing answers had become the done thing.

It's not the only explanation. After a summer long on cheating scandals—from the apparently widespread manipulation of interbank lending rates, to the Jonah Lehrer and Fareed Zakaria imbroglios and the continued slow-and-steady fall of Lance Armstrong's reputation—there's no cheating scandal so terrible to surprise us. Certainly, the 70 or so Stuyvesant High School students charged with sharing test answers via text message understood they were doing wrong.

Read More: Our Cheating Hearts: Honor, Integrity and Playing by the Rules are All Out of Style

But if you go along with our source's explanation, at least for a moment, you can imagine a Harvard administration in a tricky situation. The school has said penalties may range from formal admonishments to forcing students to withdraw from the university for a year. Coming down heavy would send the message that cheating is unacceptable, a good message for one of the world's elite educational institutions to send. But what if administrators determine it's unfair to punish students for behavior that was tacitly sanctioned—if the school puts this group of students in the clear, what kind of message does that send?

According to HuffPo, the cheating occurred on a take-home final exam; Harvard isn't saying the name of the course, but  at least 250 students were enrolled, and about half of said students are under investigation for possible cheating. From HuffPo's conversation with dean of undergraduate education Jay M. Harris:

A teaching assistant noticed some possible problems on the tests, including evidence that students collaborated on answers or used the same long, identical strings of words. The exam had clear instructions that no collaboration was allowed, Harris said.

The assistant notified the professor, who referred the case in May to the administrative board. After interviewing some students, the board found what Harris characterized as "cause for concern."

While the investigation is ongoing, punishments could range from formal admonitions to forcing students to withdraw from the university for one year, HuffPo says. If you caught our story on this summer's string of cheating scandals, you know which end of the spectrum we guess the penalties will fall on.

Lady Gaga (Getty Images)

Michael Jackson spoke before the Oxford Union in 2001, and now Lady Gaga is to rip off another pop star by speaking at Harvard. Kidding! Her speech is to address bullying and self-confidence in the launch of her nonprofit Born This Way Foundation before a crowd that's set to include Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Oprah Winfrey. The most devoted "little monsters" can watch her address and the charity's launch live at 4:30pm EST here.

Your move, Katy Perry.

Dear President Faust,

We (Cameron Winklevoss '04, Divya Narendra '04 and Tyler Winklevoss '04) are writing to discuss the recent remarks made by currentCharles W. Eliot University Professor of Harvard Lawrence H. Summers at Fortune's "Brainstorm Tech Conference" on July 19, 2011.  Specifically, Mr. Summers referred to us as "assholes" for wearing ties and jackets to our meeting with him in April of 2004.  To be clear, his remark was not limited to us, but extends to any undergraduate who chooses a particular form of attire.

As a matter of background, on March 15, 2004 we petitioned the Administrative Board (Ad Board) of Harvard regarding a disciplinary issue concerning Mark Zuckerberg '06-'07 in connection with the development of a website the four of us had been working on together.  Despite what was, from our perspective, a clear violation of the Student Handbook, which states "all students will be honest and forthcoming in their dealings with members of [the Harvard] community," the Ad Board declined to involve itself.  As students of a university that promulgated an expectation of "intellectual honest[y] [and] respect for the dignity of others," we sought a discussion with then President Summers regarding what we believed to be an inconsistency in the University's posture on this matter.

As a result, we decided to attend student office hours of the President, a two hour monthly block of time specifically allotted by President Summers for students to discuss any and all matters of concern with him.  We sent a polite and rather un-swaggering email beforehand for the purposes of background (please see attached).  It should be noted that Mr. Zuckerberg's name was purposely omitted from our email in an effort to focus the discussion on what we perceived to be a larger issue than the incident specific to ourselves.  Simply put, we went to his office seeking advice and mentorship, not further conflict.

At office hours, we waited in his reception area but were told that we would have to return next month because there were more students in the queue than time allowed.  In April of 2004, we returned to office hours and were successful in meeting with President Summers.  His manner was not inconsistent with his reputation and present day admissions of being tactfully challenged.  It was not his failure to shake hands with the three of us upon entering his office (doing so would have required him to take his feet off his desk and stand up from his chair), nor his tenor that was most alarming, but rather his scorn for a genuine discourse on deeper ethical questions, Harvard's Honor Code, and its applicability or lack thereof.

We now further understand why our meeting was less than productive; someone who does not value ethics with respect to his own conduct, would likely have little interest in this subject as it related to the conduct of others.  Perhaps there is a 'variability of aptitude' for decency and professionalism among university faculty.

Regardless, it is deeply disturbing that a professor of this university openly admits to making character judgments of students based on their appearance.  It goes without saying that every student should feel free to bring issues forward, dress how they see fit, or express themselves without fear of prejudice or public disparagement from a fellow member of the community, much less so from a faculty member.

Ironically, our choice of attire that day was made out of respect and deference to the office of the President.  As the current President, we respectfully ask for you to address this unprecedented betrayal of the unique relationship between teacher and student.  We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Cameron Winklevoss '04
Divya Narendra '04
Tyler Winklevoss '04

Will the Winklevii be dignified?
Will they get a response?
Will they be called assholes by yet another Harvard President?
Will this continue to sway public opinion in their favor, such as it is?
Will the rights of Harvard undergrads who wear ties in the afternoon ever be so valiantly fought for ever again?
And will they ever find out which one is older?

They're the questions we want answered. And they lay in the hands of one Harvard president, who is likely very, very inundated by all of this right now.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

 The New York Times received confirmation that since the city's police commissioner stepped into his position in 2002, the New York City Police Foundation has footed the bill for "some or all" of his meals and drinks — as well as his $1,500 yearly membership fee — at the Midtown rendezvous spot for graduates of the elite school. Kelly graduated from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in 1984.

A spokesperson for the commissioner indicates that all the comped food was "lawful" given that it was related to city business, but admitted that Kelly should have reported the fact that the foundation was covering his annual fee, too. The story was first reported yesterday on the blog NYPD Confidential, which cited a well-placed source. The blog mentioned that it believes Kelly is the first police commissioner to receive such perks.

The Harvard Club — with its chandelier-adorned interior with an austere red-brick facade flanking its outside — is exclusive to the graduates of the nation's oldest school and their guests. The club was in the news last week when the admissions committee denied Eliot Spitzer membership on account of the sexual dalliances that resulted in his resignation.

The rules do dictate, however, that Spitzer would be allowed to join Commissioner Kelly as his guest. If it's on government business, perhaps the former governor can save a bit of that hard-earned CNN paycheck, and let the host pick up the bill. 

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Apparently it's very rare for The Harvard Club to deny admittance to someone associated with the nation's oldest and most vaulted bulwark of academia. But if there are hookers and other sexcapades associated with an applicant, that's where they draw the line. 

A statement from Spitzer's spokesperson indicates that the new CNN co-host is a bit jilted by the snub. "The decision by the Harvard Club’s admissions committee is disappointing," Lisa Linden said. "Last year, Harvard asked Eliot to speak on ethics at the school. He supports the institution financially. It would seem that whoever made this decision at the club is not on the same page as the university itself."

But Spitzer is still free to frequent the urban outpost of his undergraduate days, The Princeton Club — where they apparently have no qualms with hosting members who have paid for sex. The Times is nice enough to break down the different amenities offered by the rival Ivy League abodes, in case you're not a member. For instance, The Harvard Club has four international-level squash courts, while The Princeton Club only has two.

Only two international-level squash courts? Eliot, now we understand your frustration.  

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

But just how much of a role did the paper play in Sorkin's whip-smart script? VF Daily's Juli Weiner is on the case. She's parsed through the two hours-plus of thriller-paced action to find every mention of Harvard's student-run publication, and provided links to the original stories on The Crimson's website (which is probably sitting pretty from all the Social Network-related traffic swells.) 

Not to give too much away, you sad holdouts, but the list of references includes the original Crimson story on Zuckerberg's hastily made — and boozily coded! — Facemash site. The article mentioned that Facemash had racked up 22,000 hits by the end of its first full day. No, not twenty-two hundred. Twenty-two thousand.

In the film, the Winklevi and Divya Narendra decide to hire Zuckerberg to code their site after discovering him through this article. 

The budding Harvard journalists go on to cover Zuckerberg's progress with The Facebook, as it was originally called, tracking it from its launch to its expansion to other schools and beyond — events that were all covered to some extent in the film, and oftentimes introduced through an article that the characters either read or expect the next morning. 

Though the film is more directly looking at a new information platform that would transform the lives of college students, it does make something of a showcase out of this college newspaper. In fact, The Social Network may be the first film to rely this heavily on the ink-stained staple of campus life — an accomplishment that may prove ironic if the social networking capabilities Facebook helped pioneer someday render the college newspaper unnecessary in print, or irrelevant in general. 

Oh well. At least we'll have The Social Network, a wistful look back to the newsprint-filled days of 2003. 

Summer is drawing to a close, and with the turning of the seasons comes the end of the Larry Summers era at the White House. Now you can say goodbye to all the hassles and headaches of public service. A straight talker who doesn't suffer fools lightly, you never were an easy fit for the political life. Good riddance, we say.

You're in good company among the 2010 departures from President Obama's economic team. Christina Romer left her spot as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors earlier this month. Now she's back teaching at Berkeley, and may be in line for the presidency -- of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Similarly, White House budget director Peter Orszag left, and now he's writing columns for one of the few national newspapers left standing!

And now you, Larry, are heading to Harvard, the place that made you, where you've already served as president. And you're packing a huge resume. You worked on the stimulus package, one of the biggest federal expenditures ever. You were chief economist at the World Bank, and did a two-year stint as Treasury Secretary under Clinton. Surely, the recruiters will be banging at your door.

Plus, Obama's made it clear that you'll be able to bend his ear as a member of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Seeing how the economy still has plenty of recovering to do, we're confident you'll get plenty of face time.

Enjoy your last couple days as director of the National Economic Council, Larry. Only good things lie ahead.

The Observer