Throwback Thursday: The Day JMU Campus Cable Showed Porn

As we mentioned before, we are old. Not ridiculously old to the point of senility, but we’re getting up there in years. So we’ll understand if you think we’re losing it and our minds are just playing tricks on us. But we swear we’re not making this up. One day way back when we were students, they showed porn on the campus cable station. In fact, I think it was on Valentine’s Day. Or maybe it was just a regular Tuesday. I’m not really sure. Let’s just go with Valentine’s Day. Because it’s much more romantic that way.

Obviously, it wasn’t intentional. Sure, the quality was closer to the picture above than today’s HD broadcasts.  But without going into detail, there was still no doubt it was explicit. It was an pre-internet, old fashioned, adult movie. Complete with a jazzed up elevator music soundtrack and poorly groomed “actors.” Rumor had it that some kids from the computer science or ISAT department (although I’m not even sure ISAT fully existed) hacked the system and created the pirate broadcast. “Hacked” is probably over-selling it. Security wasn’t exactly at the forefront of anyone’s mind back then. Some smart kids probably cut an exposed wire outside a dorm and hooked up a VCR or something. Regardless, it was a pretty epic prank.

If memory serves, word quickly spread via the most popular social media platform of the time, which of course was people sticking their heads out of their dorm rooms and screaming down the hall. And within minutes practically the entire campus was watching.

It might not sound like a big deal now, but it was pretty damn scandalous back then. Because it was a long time ago. Porn wasn’t easily accessible via every internet enabled device back then. Hell, the internet wasn’t even easily accessible via every internet enabled device back then. It was a much simpler time. Unless you were a pervert of course. It was probably a more difficult time to be a pervert. But I digress.

Anyway, it definitely happened. On one Valentine’s Day way back in the day, the JMU community joined together to watch semi-scrambled porn on campus cable for about 15 minutes. Then as quickly as it started, it stopped. And we all went back to working out in Godwin, checking email on the VAX, drinking dime drafts at JM’s, or doing whatever else we were doing. But I swear it happened.