A Jesuit university in California is defending a graduate course on human sexuality in which a student claims she was required to watch a sexual bondage video in class, read “sadomasochistic erotica” and write a detailed “sexual autobiography.”

The student, Naomi Epps Best, who was pursuing a degree in marriage and family therapy, chronicled her experiences at Santa Clara University in an op-ed published June 6 in The Wall Street Journal.

As a Protestant Christian, the 26-year-old mother of a 1-year-old believed the coursework violated her ethical and religious beliefs. Yet she says the instructor and school administrators denied her requests for alternate assignments and other accommodations.

“I chose the university partly because of its Catholic tradition,” Best told the Register. “I knew that I wasn’t entering a Christian counseling program, but I thought that there would be a tolerance for traditional or religious worldviews.”

In a statement provided to the Register, Santa Clara University maintained that the course curriculum was designed to comply with state licensing requirements for marriage and family therapists and was designed to teach students how to best serve their clients.

“Our faculty is committed to an ethical, student-centered approach to delivering a science-based curriculum that examines numerous aspects of human sexuality required for licensure,” the school’s statement said. “Understanding these issues is an essential part of preparing students to meet required professional standards and treat individuals from a broad range of human experiences.”

The university also told the Register that it had “offered multiple options for accommodations to this student,” a claim that Best disputes.

The university added that “we do not agree with many of the assertions contained in the op-ed.”

A California regulation states that marriage and family therapy students must complete instruction on “human sexuality, including the study of physiological, psychological, and social cultural variables associated with sexual behavior and gender identity, and the assessment and treatment of psychosexual dysfunction.”

“All programs, including Santa Clara’s, must meet these requirements,” the university said in its statement to the Register, “and, like MFT [marriage and family therapy] programs at other universities, our program requires internal self-reflection, which is the type of work that therapists ask of their clients.” 

“We recognize that the coursework necessarily includes uncomfortable and sensitive topics. We appreciate the concerns raised by any of our students, including those expressed by this student,” the statement said.

In her op-ed, Best wrote that she walked out of Chongzheng Wei’s “Human Sexuality” class after the professor “played a video of a female ‘influencer’ engaging in sexual bondage activity.”

Best wrote: “When the lights came up, the professor smiled and asked if we wanted to try it ourselves.” She chose to leave, she wrote, because “I didn’t want to find out if a live demonstration was next.”

Another requirement of the class was to write an eight- to 10-page “comprehensive sexual autobiography” that was to include “early sexual memories,” as well as “current experiences, and future goals with an action plan.”

The assignment was outlined in the course syllabus, according to Best, who said she shared it on her Substack account after the university removed it from its website. 

Best said she made the rounds of administrators at Santa Clara before going public with her experience — at first anonymously on Substack and then in The Wall Street Journal. 

“I appealed to the dean, the provost, the Title IX office, the university president and even Campus Ministry,” she wrote. “I’m not sure who was more shocked, the priest reading the syllabus or me, screen-sharing sexually explicit videos and images with him.”

After appealing to Wei, she said she was told that her “sexual disclosure wouldn’t be required” and so she re-enrolled in the class. The content, however, wasn’t any less disturbing, she said. One assignment, she said, required students to write down something they disliked about their genitals or breasts, “to be read aloud in class by another student.” 

In the end, she opted to withdraw from the class, delaying her plans to become a licensed therapist and incurring additional costs since she would have to take extra classes to graduate and receive her license. She wrote that her request for a refund was denied.

In response to the university’s statement that it had offered her multiple accommodations, Best pointed to her June 10 post on Substack, in which she says she was offered a “one-time exception” by the department chair to complete the assignment through continuing education credits. She wrote that this was “unacceptable” because other students were still subject to “these unethical” requirements.

Once she started writing about her ordeal anonymously on Substack, Best said, she became aware of what she said was a change that had taken place in the academic field of therapy.  

“I realized I had stumbled on to something larger. The entire field of educating therapy has been hollowed out and filled in with critical theory. Therapists are no longer trained to be netural; they’re trained to be agents of political change,” she wrote.

“Concepts like modesty and marital privacy aren’t merely treated as optional or even dismissed. They’re seen as oppressive norms to be actively combated,” said Best.

Another required class, “Multicultural Counseling,” she wrote, was highly politicized.

Students were told that “objective, rational, linear thinking,” “delayed gratification, and making a “plan for the future are traits of ‘white culture.’ In the “Human Sexuality” class, the professor, she wrote, taught that children experiencing six months of “gender distress” should be “affirmed” in their belief that they are members of the opposite sex.

In an open letter to Santa Clara’s administration posted on Substack on June 6, Best described her ordeal in greater graphic detail and called on school administrators to “immediately discontinue the mandatory sexual autobiography assignment,” allow students to opt out of coursework that is contrary to their personal religious beliefs, and to allow her to finish her program “unobstructed without retaliation.”

Santa Clara University is located within the Diocese of San Jose, headed by Bishop Oscar Cantú. The diocese did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication.