Hot for Chancellor - Part 2

Summary

Campus Files: "Hot for Chancellor - Part 2" Summary

Introduction In the riveting episode titled "Hot for Chancellor - Part 2" of Campus Files by Audacy, host Elliot Adler delves deeper into the controversial downfall of Joe Gao, the former Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UW La Crosse). Alongside his wife, Carmen Wilson, Joe navigates the tumultuous waters of academia, personal expression, and public scandal. This episode offers an intimate look into their lives, the motivations behind their actions, and the repercussions that followed.

Background and Relationship The episode begins with Elliot Adler arriving at the Gao-Wilson household in La Crosse, Wisconsin, setting the stage for an in-depth conversation with the couple.

• Introduction to the Couple: Joe Gao, a tall, fit man in his mid-60s with salt-and-pepper hair, and Carmen Wilson, a younger woman with long brown hair, share their journey from professional partners to life partners. Joe emphasizes the symbiotic nature of their relationship:

  "We're always eager to tell the full story because this is really a partnership... two people making equal contributions." ([04:00])

• Professional Beginnings: Carmen's move into academia began after her doctorate in counseling psychology, leading her to teach at UW La Crosse. Her involvement in the search committee for the Chancellor's position is where she first met Joe Gao, who she later married in 2011.

Exploration of Sexual Expression The heart of the episode explores how Joe and Carmen integrated their personal expressions of sexuality with their professional lives.

• Initial Experiments: The couple started with personal video recordings, gradually escalating to involving professional pornographic actors. Carmen explains:

  "We started with OnlyFans and loyal fans... put a couple videos on Pornhub and Xhamster, and the Porhub site got a little bit of interest... then it exploded." ([18:39])

• Creative Ventures: Joe introduces innovative ideas to merge their interests, such as combining erotic content with cooking shows. He narrates:

  "We were in a gym... saw Chip and Joanna Gaines... thought we could do something like cooking while emphasizing the couple dynamic." ([11:22])

Professional Turmoil and Scandal As Joe and Carmen continued their ventures into adult content creation, their professional lives began to unravel.

• Cultural Shifts in Academia: Both discuss the increasing politicization of academia and the diminishing autonomy of university campuses:

  "When I was hired to be chancellor, it was really do your own thing... over time, there was more and more political influence." ([14:59])

• Invitation to Controversy: In 2018, Joe faced backlash for inviting adult film star Nina Hartley to speak on campus, signaling the beginning of institutional discomfort:

  "In 2018, Joe caught tons of flack from his bosses for inviting adult film star and sex educator Nina Hartley to speak on campus." ([14:43])

• Job Loss and Fallout: In December 2023, Joe received an unexpected termination notice while on vacation. Carmen recounts the immediate crisis management:

  "He gets an email that you've been fired as chancellor... very difficult to try to explain in a phone call." ([22:59])

Legal Battle and Aftermath The episode details Joe's response to his dismissal and the couple's subsequent legal actions.

• Filing a Lawsuit: In January 2025, Joe files a federal lawsuit against the UW system, citing violations of his First Amendment rights and academic freedom:

  "Joe filed a federal lawsuit against the UW system. He claims his dismissal was unconstitutional, violating both his free speech rights and the system's own stated commitment to academic freedom." ([26:09])

• Impact on Careers: Carmen shares the emotional toll of losing her career, describing it as a period of grief:

  "Losing that career goal, that was sad." ([30:25])

Current Endeavors and Future Plans Despite the scandal, Joe and Carmen have found new purposes and continue to engage with the community in meaningful ways.

• Shift Away from Explicit Content: They have ceased producing new sexually explicit videos, focusing instead on positive discussions around sexuality and free speech:

  "We haven't made any content since well before this whole thing broke... We might do other things, like the cooking piece." ([26:29])

• Educational Engagements: Joe remains committed to education through alternative avenues, such as speaking engagements:

  "We were invited just the other week to go to the University of Minnesota and speak in a media law class." ([28:59])

• Support and Resilience: The couple highlights the support they've received from alumni and the community, reinforcing their resilience:

  "We've had to stand unified against the critics. But we have a lot of support, too." ([27:03])

Notable Quotes

• Joe Gao on Free Speech:

  "We don't think that's appropriate... think that people who do want to see these things have the freedom." ([28:24])

• Carmen Wilson on Purpose:

  "We think of what we're doing as sex positive... invigorating." ([30:52])

Conclusion "Hot for Chancellor - Part 2" provides a comprehensive and nuanced exploration of Joe Gao and Carmen Wilson's lives, balancing personal revelations with broader discussions on academic freedom and free expression. Through candid interviews and detailed storytelling, the episode paints a vivid picture of the complexities behind the scandal, offering listeners a balanced perspective on the intersection of personal choices and professional responsibilities.

Episode Credits The episode was meticulously crafted by Elliot Adler, with production contributions from Ian Mont, Eliot Adler, and Margo Gray. Special acknowledgments go to their executive producers, story editors, and the dedicated team behind the scenes.

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For more intriguing stories on scandals that have rocked American institutions, explore Seasons 1-3 of Gangster Capitalism available in this feed.

Transcript

[Elliot Adler]

This episode is brought to you by Universal Pictures. From Universal Pictures in Blumhouse come a storm of terror from the director of the Shallows. The Woman in the Yard. Don't let her in. Where does she come from? What does she want? When will she leave? Today's the day. The Woman in the Yard Only in theaters March 28th.

[Meghan Trainor]

Meghan Trainor Laundry retrainer.

[Carmen Wilson]

Meghan Trainor. You're tossing out my gunky laundry detergent bottle.

[Meghan Trainor]

Ooey, it's got that booty that juicy.

[Joe Gao]

Bum boom that don't bite alive Arm.

[Carmen Wilson]

And hammer power Sheets toss like this.

Cause I toss like this A wash.

[Joe Gao]

Like this It's a no mess Laundry.

[Meghan Trainor]

Bliss Arm and hammer power she power to you A heads up. This story contains references to sex and pornography and might not be appropriate for every listener. Previously on Campus Files.

[Carmen Wilson]

She's Carmen and he's Joe. And we are the sexy happy couple. And this is sexy healthy cooking.

[Meghan Trainor]

We have breaking news tonight. UWL Chancellor Joe Gao has been fired for producing online pornography.

[Joe Gao]

He was guilty of, quote, unethical and potential essentially illegal conduct.

[Carmen Wilson]

Joe Gao under fire for hiring a porn star to give a speech.

[Joe Gao]

It seemed to be really well received.

[Jonathan Van Ness]

By students, not as well received by system officials. Gao says the board fired him because they were uncomfortable with him and his wife producing and appearing in pornographic videos.

[Joe Gao]

Alrighty. It is 26 degrees outside. I am in a little neighborhood outside of La Crosse, Wisconsin.

[Meghan Trainor]

That's Campus Files producer Elliot Adler. He's standing outside the home of Joe Gao, the former chancellor of University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. Last week, you heard Joe's story. The popular, long serving chancellor of a major UW campus who was fired for posting pornographic content of him and his wife online. We sent Elliot to dig deeper into the story. He'll take it from here.

[Joe Gao]

In December of 2024, I found myself walking through a few inches of fresh snow to the home of Joe Gao and his wife, Carmen Wilson. Whoa, are you Joe? I'm Elliot.

Good to see you. You can park in the driveway.

Would you prefer that? I'm happy to.

That might be better for your car.

Three weeks prior, had reached out to the couple to see if they'd be willing to talk about their situation. Within four hours, they had responded with an invite to their home, which after reparking my car, I was welcomed into. Take two. Here we go.

And there's Carmen.

Hey, Carmen, I'm Elliot.

[Margo Gray]

Nice to meet you.

[Joe Gao]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Carmen Wilson]

Thanks for sharing.

[Joe Gao]

I love this neighborhood. Love the house. This Week on Campus Files, we talked to Joe Gao and Carmen Wilson to hear their side of the story. Joe Gao is a tall, fit, wiry guy in his mid-60s, with a pretty full head of salt and pepper hair. Carmen Wilson is a bit younger, has long brown hair with bangs, and that day was wearing a pair of flared rodeo appropriate jeans.

At the outset, we'll say, I've gotten a whole lot of attention because I was in the chancellor job and it was a very high profile thing and fired. But Carmen's story is equally interesting. It just doesn't tend to get told. So we're always eager to tell the full story because this is really a partnership. I mean, for lack of a better metaphor, it's like Simon and Garfunkel. I mean, you couldn't do it alone. It's two people making equal contributions. In some cases, like the cooking piece, that's all her. So there's a lot there that I don't think has been talked about yet. We're eager to do that.

We know where this story ends. But how does a university chancellor start making porn and lose his job because of it? To understand that, we need to hear from Joe's wife, the Garfunkel, to his Simon.

[Carmen Wilson]

My doctorate is in counseling psychology, and I had intended to be a therapist. And as it turned out, my husband at the time got a job at University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.

[Joe Gao]

This is a previous marriage Carmen is talking about. Long before Joe Gao.

[Carmen Wilson]

Then I moved up here and there were not therapy jobs, but there were teaching jobs at uwl. So I started teaching in the psychology department and really loved it. And as I got into a faculty role, a tenured and full professor, I became involved in lots of service activities, chaired the search for the Chancellor.

[Joe Gao]

This is where Carmen first met Joe. She was on the committee that eventually hired him, and she later became his chief of staff. During this time, Carmen also played bagpipes in Joe's faculty band. So did her soon to be ex husband, and so did Joe's soon to be ex wife. The two couples eventually split. That's when Joe and Carmen got together. Now, Campus Files is a show about college life in America. But to truly understand how and why this university chancellor lost his job, we need to go behind closed doors.

[Carmen Wilson]

This is neither of our first marriages. We've both been married before, and, you know, we knew what we wanted sexually. Our partners were not always on the same page. So that when we got together as we were older, it's sort of like, well, what do you want sexually? Let's not play any games here. Let's make sure we're on the same page.

[Joe Gao]

Pretty soon after Getting together in 2011, Carmen left the University of Wisconsin lacrosse for a new position as dean of UW Rock County, a small school in southern Wisconsin, which was about three hours away. The couple maintained a long distance relationship while they each led their respective schools.

At some point we said, oh, what would it be like to have sex on video? You know, and so I don't know. Well, then we're going to need to go buy a camcorder. So we went to the Best Buy in Janesville, Wisconsin, near her campus, and we went over to the video camera area and one of the nice clerks there came over and she said, can I help you? No, we're going to buy a video camera. And the clerk says, what are you gonna shoot?

[Carmen Wilson]

I said, stuff. And she said, like sports? I said, yeah, like that. You're gonna need a tripod. Sure enough, we did need a tripod.

[Joe Gao]

Which they used to shoot videos of themselves having sex. It was their kink. On weekends, they would visit each other and expand their repertoire in the bedroom. If you don't mind just talking me through, you've got a home camcorder. How do you end up flying out to Las Vegas and hiring known pornographic actors?

[Carmen Wilson]

We were interested in involving other people in our sex life and experimented with things. And we tried polyamory for about 10 seconds. And that works for many people. Did not work for us. We went to a swingers club that was just a comedy of errors. Not for us. And so it's like, well, how can we get other people involved in a way that there's no weirdness, no emotional struggles? Well, hire a professional. And so we did hire some professional sex workers out where? It's legal in Nevada, in Nevada.

[Joe Gao]

Moonlight Bunny Ranch.

[Carmen Wilson]

And then he hired a male stripper for me. We were in Chicago and that was fun. And this guy worked in the industry and he said, well, you know, there's this exotica, which is a sex convention. There's talent there. And you could call an agent and see if, you know, and say, we want to shoot some video with some of your talent.

[Joe Gao]

This was around 2013, about six years into Joe's chancellorship at UW lacrosse.

And I was just kind of like, yeah, right. Ha ha ha ha ha. And then we went home and we talked about that and I said, all right, I'm going to call up one of these big agencies and say, you're going to be in Chicago. Your people and we want to make a documentary and interview somebody and then have a sex scene with them, and we'll shoot it, and would you do that? And they were kind of, well, are you serious about this? I said, oh, yeah, we're on the level. And they said, all right, we'll send pictures of the two of you, and we'll run it by the owner and see what he thinks. And so they did talk to the owner, and we were able to book some performers. It really was a lot of fun, but it also clued us into, you know, you don't want to be having to worry about holding the camera and zooming and all of that. So you need to get professional people.

Not long after their first experience with a porn star. Well, actually, on a work trip to Los Angeles, the couple hired a full production crew. It would just be Joe and Carmen in the scene, but behind the camera, there was a videographer, production assistant, and makeup artist. All of this took place in a penthouse apartment with a view of the Hollywood sign. Going forward, about once a year, the couple would fly out to Phoenix or LA or Las Vegas and shoot a scene, sometimes just the two of them on camera, sometimes hiring a porn star to join them.

The videos that we made, we made those for us. And so there's a. It's kind of like painting a painting, just, well, I'm not doing this to try to sell it. I'm just doing it as self expression, perhaps.

Drawing on their educator instincts, the couple would often interview the porn star during these shoots.

[Carmen Wilson]

To some degree is just to humanize the talent in the industry. Because, you know, we. We have a talent person. We interview them and to realize that these are highly educated people, often married in relationships, they go to the grocery store just like you and I do. So it's fun to get to know them.

[Joe Gao]

Joe and Carmen married in 2014. And around this same time, Joe had an idea of a way to kind of spice up the interviews that they were conducting with the porn stars.

[Carmen Wilson]

The cooking videos, that was really Joe's idea.

[Joe Gao]

We were always looking for, okay, what's the next thing we can do that we haven't done? That maybe will, you know, kind of up the production vouch and make this more interesting. And we were in a gym. We were on the elliptical machines. And there are the monitors up in front of you on the TVs with the sound down. And I was pumping away there. And I looked up and I saw Chip and Joanna Gaines. And I thought, yeah, they're an attractive couple. And I thought, you know, Carmen's as telegenic as Joanna. Maybe I'm in chips league. I don't know. But, boy, could we do something like. That's more. The couple is really emphasized. And then I turned my head and I saw the Food Network and said, oh, cooking, yeah. Carmen's a great vegan cook. And so got this wild idea. And I remember when I pitched that idea to you, you thought, that's a little wild.

[Carmen Wilson]

And a teaspoon of salt. Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake.

[Elliot Adler]

Shake, shake, shake, shake.

[Carmen Wilson]

And then I'm just gonna mash this up.

[Joe Gao]

But as you can hear, Joe's wild idea had legs.

[Carmen Wilson]

I see you're very hands on.

I am very hands on. I would know, right?

[Joe Gao]

What is the crew saying? Are they saying, who are you shooting this for? Or is it kind of an understood thing that people shoot boutique porn for themselves?

[Carmen Wilson]

I think we were very unusual couple for them. And the cooking piece, I think they enjoyed that because it was something different than what they typically do.

[Joe Gao]

Some people, they don't cook at all. Other people, like Nina Hartley, who's a legendary figure, she was just all, oh, I love to cook, and let's talk food and everything like that. And one of the people, guy named Damon Dice, he actually had a culinary art degree from a school, and so he was all about, let me get in there and chop up stuff with you. And I think for everybody, the food piece was unusual in a fun way.

In a way. And I hope this isn't dismissive, but it sounds like you were cosplaying at being porn stars.

[Carmen Wilson]

I don't find that dismissive.

[Joe Gao]

I would say, no, I'll take it.

[Carmen Wilson]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Joe Gao]

And then also kind of cosplaying is having a cooking show.

[Carmen Wilson]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Joe Gao]

While Joe and Carmen were enjoying this new aspect of their relationship, their work life was changing. Carmen lost her job to budget cuts, and she ended up moving to North Dakota for a new position. It was around this time that both Joe and Carmen started to see some major and troubling changes on their campuses.

[Carmen Wilson]

When I started in academia and when Joe got to be chancellor, campuses, you know, were really given the autonomy to decide what was best for them and to work towards those things. And then it shifted. The people in charge, the boards, the president of the system, whomever would say, no, we're going to do it, you're going to do it this way. And in part, that was influenced by legislators. This is what you educators are going to do. And that's just not tenable.

[Joe Gao]

When I was hired to be chancellor, it was really do your own thing, develop an identity for the campus. You know, the system didn't really want to meddle in the campus affairs. And over time, there was more and more political influence.

It was in 2018 that Joe caught tons of flack from his bosses for inviting adult film star and sex educator Nina Hartley to speak on campus.

And then now you even have legislators wanting to talk about what we can teach or not teach on campus.

After four trying years in North Dakota, in 2020, Carmen took a job at a school in Buffalo, New York. Joe was thinking about stepping down as chancellor, and the couple actually bought a house in Buffalo. But within a year of moving, Carmen was forced out of her position. The school was shuttered shortly thereafter. Thankfully, another school in western New York promised Carmen a job.

But three or four months go by, and then she gets an email, and it's like, no, you're not getting the job.

[Carmen Wilson]

Literally, like two sentences. I mean, he didn't even have the courtesy to call me on the phone, you know, but it was just. It was so disheartening and disrespectful. And that was. That was really the straw that did it for me.

[Joe Gao]

Yeah. I mean, she didn't deserve that. And so it was like this, well, hey, what else are we going to do with our lives? And that's when we started to take some chances with the videos.

[Margo Gray]

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[Jonathan Van Ness]

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[Joe Gao]

This brings us to the fall of 2023. Joe had announced his intention to retire from the chancellorship at the of the Academic year, and Carmen had more or less given up on her academic career. They also happened to be sitting on a modest collection of sexual videos they had made over the previous decade.

[Carmen Wilson]

We would make maybe one video a year occasionally. I think there was once where we had two in a calendar year, but they were nine months apart. I mean, so this is not something that we did all the time.

[Joe Gao]

These videos that we've been making completely in secret. I mean, nobody knew about that other than the people we worked on them with. I mean, we didn't tell any friends or family or anybody. And we thought, well, maybe we could put some videos into the world and just see whether people would like them, you know? And so we started with OnlyFans and loyal fans, which are sites where you have to join and pay. And so it's a pretty restricted area.

[Carmen Wilson]

If I were still pursuing a career in academia, we never would have posted them anywhere. But once we had made that decision, it's like, okay, well, we could post them behind paywalls, because that's the safest place.

[Joe Gao]

So we put the videos out. What happened?

[Carmen Wilson]

Three people cared, literally. We had, like, three followers. And so, you know, we would sell one a day or two a day, and like, ooh, that's exciting. We made $1.20 or something like that.

[Joe Gao]

And we weren't in it for the money. But it's kind of like if you wrote a book or you recorded a song or you did a podcast, you want an audience for it. And so we were talking about our frustrations with the guy who edits the videos, and he is employed by a big company that's a studio that makes adult content. And he said, well, you know, the free sites, you might get more interest there. So we put a couple videos on the sites Pornhub and Xhamster, and the pornhub site got a little bit of interest, you know, maybe a few hundred views. Exhampster. That was the real shock. 10 views, 100 views. The next day, 1,000 views. 10,000 views, 100,000 views. Before we knew it, in a few weeks, like two weeks, we were the number two creators on XHamster for North America.

[Carmen Wilson]

And we had over a million views of. I don't know, we had three or four videos. So combined, over a million views.

[Joe Gao]

It was this strange surprise. And then it'd be kind of like if you recorded a song and then you heard it on the radio. Oh, people actually like this.

[Carmen Wilson]

I didn't really process what that meant. We know that Joe is very recognizable wherever we go, literally. In the world, we're likely to have somebody come up to and say, oh, Joe Gao, you know, we're in Mexico. And there were three couples at the resort. Oh, Joe from lacrosse, you know, and so we know he's recognizable. So there was this sense that, yeah, probably somebody's going to see it, but if they're there, if they're on Xhamster, they're going to Exhamster to watch porn.

[Joe Gao]

So what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Joe was confident they were in the clear. So much so that even when he received an email from the UW legal team saying they wanted to meet with him regarding a personnel matter, he wasn't worried in the least. This was just before Christmas 2023.

Now, if you've been doing this as long As I have, 16 years, that's a pretty common thing. You know, some things happening. I didn't know it was about me. And so I went to the zoom meeting, and there's one of the lead attorneys and somebody from the HR office, and they started asking me about the videos.

The university was especially interested in whether Joe had failed to report money that he had made from his pornographic career. The answer was basically no. Even a million views on Xhamster was pennies in advertising. Joe was uneasy, but not overly concerned.

This was the Wednesday before Christmas, and I didn't even tell Carmen about this meeting because we were going on a trip to visit family, and I didn't want to put a cloud over it.

But what were you feeling?

I was really puzzled. I mean, I thought I was going to get a phone call from the president of the system, and he was going to say, hey, these videos are a problem for us. You need to take them down, or you need to just resign quietly so that we don't call a lot of attention to this. And that's the way they usually operate.

You got any examples?

Well, not that I can really talk about in general, the big one in the era that both of us was sexual harassment that you'd hear about. Okay, a complaint has been filed. This professor is sexually harassing a student. We do an investigation. You'd find out if you have enough evidence to prove that. If so, talk to that person. And they would always just retire or resign.

But that's not how things played out. Instead, while on vacation in Florida over Christmas break at 8pm on December 27.

[Carmen Wilson]

He gets an email that you've been fired as chancellor. And the president said he was filing a complaint to have him removed of his tenure position.

[Joe Gao]

How are you feeling during all of.

[Carmen Wilson]

This, you know, I was shocked. It was immediate, like, crisis mode. Like, how do we deal with this right now? Because this is going to be a big story and we have families, right? And so we needed to address that. So very early the next morning on the 28th, we called our families. So I called my daughter first because I knew she would be up because she's got little ones. And then I waited to call my mom. And she lives in a little town north of here, and she walks with her lady friends in the morning time. And so I called her and she was walking with her lady friends, and I said, well, I can wait till you get home and you can call me back. She's like, no, you can tell me now. And so I told her, and she was shocked, but she's like, we'll get through this. Well, she gets off the phone and her lady friends had already heard.

[Joe Gao]

So that was very difficult to try to explain in a phone call. Well, for the past 10 years, we've been secretly making sexually explicit videos and writing books, and now we've been exposed, and this is going to be in the media. That was quite a hectic time.

[Carmen Wilson]

Yeah, it's crisis mode. It was just constant responding to emails in the airport, on the plane, before they shut the door on the plane, after you land in the Delta Lounge. I clearly remember going through Joe's phone, his email, and all of the people that we had not responded to. And I would click on one and I would call them and I would say, hi, I'm Carmen Wilson, I'm Joe Gao's wife. He can talk to you now if you want. And handing the phone to him, and then he would say his bit, and then we'd do the next one and the next one and the next one. And by the time we got home, we had gotten through everybody. But it was a long day.

[Joe Gao]

Had either of you ever experienced that sort of, like, emotional drain from whether it was a familial, professional sort of thing?

[Carmen Wilson]

Not like that, no. I mean, it was just so sudden and overwhelming and unexpected. I mean, you know, we both lost a parent, but it was that you have some preparation for this. There was no prep. Right. It was just like the 27th, he gets at, like, 8:00, gets the letter. The 28th, at 8:00, the phone starts ringing. Doesn't.

[Joe Gao]

For the next nine months, Joe fought for his job as a tenured professor, a battle he ultimately lost.

The one thing, I guess we would hope is that people would say, regardless of the Media or the message or what have you. There's a First Amendment, and what we did was an exercise in free expression. And. And that has to be respected at some level.

In January of 2025, on the first day of the spring semester, Joe filed a federal lawsuit against the UW system. He claims his dismissal was unconstitutional, violating both his free speech rights and the system's own stated commitment to academic freedom. Where are things now? Are you still making content?

[Carmen Wilson]

We haven't made any content since well before this whole thing broke. And I would say that people, I think, sometimes think that, oh, we make all this content. The reality is, is we would make maybe one video a year, and we funded it all. And I don't know that we will continue to make sexual content. We might do other things, like the cooking piece. We really enjoy that.

[Joe Gao]

And your videos are still available for purchase, but you're not adding new ones.

[Carmen Wilson]

Correct.

[Joe Gao]

Does that bring in some money these days?

[Carmen Wilson]

I would say at this point, between onlyfans and loyal fans, you know, we're looking at two to three thousand dollars a month.

[Joe Gao]

It is definitely kind of a period in time for us that we did this as a hobby. And, you know, it will always be that.

[Carmen Wilson]

That's right.

[Joe Gao]

Yeah.

How are you guys doing?

[Carmen Wilson]

Good. You know, we're doing well. I think in many ways, this whole experience has brought us even closer together, you know, just because we've had to stand unified against the critics. But we have a lot of support, too. In the very beginning, we got actually snail mail from alumni and other people that we didn't even know saying, we support you. We think you're getting a raw deal. One alum sent a picture of her family Christmas card, and on it she wrote, you know, my husband's from Germany, and he doesn't understand what the fuss is about. Right. We go out into the community, and people come up to us all the time and say, you know, we're standing behind you. And so they've started to see us, you know, as an interesting couple. So the fact that their parents or legislators think we're corrupting the young minds, that's not been our experience when we interact with students. And so that's fun.

[Joe Gao]

I guess what we wish is that the people who are so uncomfortable, hey, nobody's making you go and watch this. You have to choose to do that. So don't watch it. But don't try to take away the freedom that people who do want to see these things have. You know, we don't think that's appropriate.

[Carmen Wilson]

Well, and we think what we do is very sex positive.

[Joe Gao]

Even if Joe doesn't get his job back, he's not stepping away from education entirely. He plans to stay connected just in a different way.

We were invited just the other week to go to the University of Minnesota and speak in a media law class. And that was just fantastic. We like to get out and meet with people and have good discussions like we're having right now. And so we would love to travel and visit university and college campuses or anywhere else where people want to get together and talk about all the issues that our situation raises and what it implies for the future.

Best case scenario, how does it end?

I get my job back as a faculty member, and there probably will be some monetary damages to pay the attorneys who so kindly put in the time to do this. And we're very lucky that I have a pension and we have to pay for our own health insurance now. We'd like to get that rectified through the courts and get that back. It's not a question. A lot of people who are involved in the sex industry, you know, they have to do things because they got to make a living and pay their bills. Were okay on that count. So it's really more the principle of the thing than any kind of economic issues.

I don't know if you can equate the two, but what was more traumatic, dealing with the fallout from the videos or losing your career?

[Carmen Wilson]

I would say losing my career, actually. I don't know if it's traumatic, but really sad. It's something that I had to grieve, you know, where putting the videos out was shocking. I mean, well, the fallout was shocking and we dealt with it and we're great. But losing that career goal, that was sad.

[Joe Gao]

Do you feel like you've found a new purpose since then?

[Carmen Wilson]

In many ways, I would say yes. Again, we think of what we're doing as sex positive. We like to have good conversations about it in whatever of this whole complex story, ranging from vegan cooking to positive sexuality to navigating sexuality with your partner, to free speech to whatever it is. We enjoy that conversation. And if we can continue to have those conversations in places, that would be our purpose. And I think that's really invigorating.

[Joe Gao]

Special thanks to Joe Gao and Carmen Wilson for inviting us into their home.

[Meghan Trainor]

Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast. This episode was written and reported by Elliot Adler. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont Eliot Adler and me, Margo Gray. Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprunkheiser. And Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basel and Andy Jaskowicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss Berman, J.D. crowley, Leah Rhys, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hilary Schuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman, and Hilary Van Ornam. Original theme music by James Waterman and Davey Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to [e-mail].

[Carmen Wilson]

I'm Joyn Robinson, host of the new podcast the Women's Hoop Show. Each episode I'll be joined by a rotating group of women's basketball experts to talk wnba, college hoops, the new unrivaled league, and the shifting landscape of the sport. The game is growing, and so are we. Listen to and follow the Women's Hoop show and Odyssey Podcast, available now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast.