Students make hobby of downloading porn

Students in residence halls acknowledge that they use the campus network to download pornography, but university officials said that they do nothing to stop this practice even though it's technically a code of conduct violation.

The university doesn't have the resources to send "squads" of people to enforce this, said Sharon Kha, the UA spokeswoman.

"The university does not actively police what students are looking at on their personal computers," Kha said.

Jeremy Miranda, a chemistry freshman and resident of Villa del Puente, said he estimates that 98 percent of his online time is spent viewing pornography.

"I'm definitely making up for those who don't look at porn," he said.

Students' activities while on the Internet are not monitored and no content filters are in place, said Ted Frohling, a network systems analyst for Center for Computing and Information Technology.

"We're not in the censorship business," he said.

Jean McGrath, a former Republican representative in the Arizona Legislature, tried three years ago to limit students in residence halls to viewing educational related content only. The proposal, which ultimately failed, would have required the UA to install a filtering system to prevent access to banned content.

Frohling said he doubts a filtering system will ever be put in place.

But if a student is suspected of viewing child pornography, which is illegal, the student would be turned over to UAPD, Frohling said.

This has occurred at least once in the past two years, Frohling said.

Kevin Conners and Keegan Meyer, pre-business freshmen, who were working on their computers together in a study lounge in Villa del Puente, said that they use KazAa to download their porn.

KazAa and other applications like it are not banned or blocked by CCIT but their use is limited during the daytime to prevent them from taking up resources during the workday, Frohling said.

Both Meyer and Conners said that they view porn approximately four times a week for five to 10 minutes.

Conners said half of his hard drive has porn on it. He also has 13 porn videos downloaded onto his computer.

Miranda doesn't store porn on his computer because he said he thinks it gets old.

"You don't want to view the same porn over and over," he said.

Miranda said sometimes porn can be a distraction.

On his one-to-two-hour porn excursions, he said it's hard to find the "top notch" stuff, and said he can't just stop looking.

Conners said he sometimes watches porn instead of doing homework, but he added that porn does not get in the way of his studies.

Not all students view porn, but some who don't look at porn on a regular basis said they have no problem with those who do.

"It's gross, but funny," said Amber Padilla, a pre-business sophomore.

She said she finds it amusing because it helps some people make a living.

Tiffany Warda, a pre-business sophomore, said that viewing porn is a personal decision.

Although she personally doesn't like porn, people should be allowed to look at it, she said.

"I think that mostly guys are into it, but I'm not," said Jacquelyn Calvo, a pre-business sophomore. "I don't necessarily agree with pornography. I feel its exploitation."

But "whatever floats your boat," she added.