Avery Adelini is a biological sciences sophomore and political opinion columnist for Mustang News. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Mustang Media Group.
For Cal Poly students, Week of Welcome or “WOW” week, is one of the most memorable parts of their freshman year. In the sea of mandatory presentations required of new students, I was reminded of the unconventional approach that the Sex. E Show takes in presenting its content. In the weeks following my experience as a WOW leader, I still think it might be one of the only shows I’ll ever watch where the performers asked the audience to boo them.
For those unfamiliar, the Sex.E Show is an interactive improv comedy presentation for the entire freshman class during Cal Poly’s Week of Welcome. It’s one of the many presentations that WOW groups attend, but its format stands apart from the typical lecture-style slideshows.
Using humor, improv and audience participation, the Sex. E Show discusses topics such as sex, consent and sexual assault without making light of their seriousness. The presentation remains effective not just for its entertainment value, but because of the approachability and openness it brings to often-awkward topics.
Unfortunately, despite this break from conformity, student attention was not all there. I sat directly behind a Wowie who was watching Instagram Reels for the duration of the performance—full brightness, full sound on.
I can’t even imagine how checked out he must have been during the other mandatory presentations. Clearly, this production just wasn’t enjoyable enough for him to be bothered to watch. But how important should entertainment value be in mandatory presentations anyway?
Humor should not be the sole reason students use to decide if the show deserves attention. The “boring” mandatory presentations go over topics that equally deserve our focus. Presenters shouldn’t have to “win” our time; they shouldn’t have to fight to hold our attention and beg for us to put our phones away with funny jokes and silly bits.
Having the Sex.E Show is a privilege. In an environment built around constant stimulation, we often treat boredom as permission to tune out. It isn’t.
Sometimes we have to be bored. In the context of discussing safe and respectful sexual activity, disengaging from the material sends a signal to peers that this person does not care for my safety.
The Sex. E Show uses humor for a larger purpose: making conversations about intimacy more approachable. The actors performed several scenes in which they interacted with the audience. During my favorite scene, they had us boo and wave our arms in the air whenever we noticed potentially abusive behavior in one character’s relationship.
This engagement didn’t just hold our attention; it also overpowered the disengagement I noticed and created a sense of solidarity between everyone in the room.
Physically seeing and hearing a big chunk of your class acknowledge when a relationship is turning abusive is extremely comforting. In these moments, the troupe showed us that recognizing these red flags is valid and we are not alone in identifying them.
It’s easy to assume that the humor in the Sex. E Show is an attempt to make a mandatory presentation “hip with the kids” and “cool enough” to get Wowies to watch it.
Instead, the performers use comedy deliberately to ease the embarrassment and awkwardness surrounding intimate conversations, especially for students who may be having them for the first time.
Unless Cal Poly starts pairing their presentations with clips of Subway Surfers or bits of Shameless episodes, there is no way to achieve universal participation. The people who won’t listen simply won’t, and that’s their prerogative.
The Show’s humor is effective in encouraging engagement, but it does not invalidate respect for other mandatory presentations. The Sex. E Show succeeds because it makes difficult conversations easier to enter. The least we can do is meet these conversations with the same respect they ask us to show one another.