Senator plans to watch videos from KU sex class

Full compliance with request will cost Wagle $1,200

Kansas University officials will let Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, watch the videos used in professor Dennis Dailey’s class on human sexuality. But if she wants copies of everything he’s written, it will cost her about $1,200.

Wagle filed a formal open records request with the university last week, asking for copies of the videos and a long list of other information about Dailey.

The university declined to provide copies of the videos because they are copyrighted. Instead, it agreed to arrange for a viewing after May 8, the last day of regular classes.

“I appreciate the university making the videos available,” Wagle said Thursday, noting that a date for the viewing had not been set.

Last month, Wagle accused Dailey of showing pornographic videos in his class “Human Sexuality in Everyday Life.” University officials have said the videos — most of them depicting heterosexual, gay and lesbian couples engaging in sex acts — are explicit but not pornographic.

It’s not known how many legislators will attend the screening.

“I’ve had several people indicate an interest in seeing them — to see for themselves,” Wagle said. “And I’ve had several say they don’t really want to see them.”

Wagle said she was not opposed to the viewing being open to the public.

“I feel like the public should see these videos,” she said.

A full viewing of the 11 videos is expected to take about three hours. Some of the videos last between 5 and 20 minutes; the longest is 35 minutes.

Some of the videos were filmed in the 1970s; others as recent as the 1990s.

Lynn Bretz, a spokeswoman for KU, said the university did not oppose Wagle’s request to see the videos.

“We are a state agency and a public university,” Bretz said. “And we’re complying with the terms spelled out in the state’s open records act.”

In her request, filed April 23, Wagle also sought:

  • Dailey’s resume, copies of his published works and conference presentations.
  • An accounting of the money spent on “videos and teaching aids” used in the class for the past two years.
  • An accounting of the grades given to students in the 2002 fall and spring semesters.
  • An accounting of Dailey’s out-of-state travel charged to the university.

“(Dailey) says he’s a world-renowned sex therapist and that he has all kinds of credentials — well, I’d like to see them,” Wagle said. “The rest is state-funded stuff that I think we’re entitled to know.”

In the university’s response, chief business and financial planning officer Theresa Klinkenberg noted:

  • In the past five years, Dailey has not charged the university for any out-of-state travel.
  • The university tracks grades by student, not by class. So an accounting of the class’s grades was not readily available.
  • It appears that Dailey hasn’t billed the university for videos or teaching aids in the past five years.
  • Because Dailey has published 11 books or book chapters, and more than 65 articles, the university would have to charge Wagle $1,175 for a complete copy of the professor’s works (30 hours labor at $26.38 per hour, plus 24 cents per page copy charge).

“We’re looking at other ways to get that,” Wagle said, referring to Dailey’s published works.

Dailey, 64, began teaching “Human Sexuality in Everyday Life” at KU in 1973. About 15,000 students have taken the course.

Dailey won KU’s Budig Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1986; he’s nominated again this year.

He won the university’s prestigious H.O.P.E. Award in 1993.

Contacted by the Journal-World, Dailey declined to comment Thursday on Wagle’s open records request.

Larry Draper, a professor in molecular bioscience and a member of the university’s faculty-student council, said that while he was “uncomfortable” with Wagle’s inquiry, he didn’t “see anything illegal about it.”

About Wagle viewing the videos, Draper said, “It’s fine — this is material that’s shown to students, and she wants to verify in her own mind that the material is unsavory. That’s OK, but to use that information to encroach upon the class’ syllabus would be quite another matter.”