Dozens of USC students huddled at the feet of evangelical preacher Sister Cindy Smock, riveted by her sermon about sexual depravity, the danger of margaritas and the six classifications of “ho’s.”

“You’re about to witness the raw, uncut, ‘Sister Cindy slut shaming show,’” Smock wailed while pacing around Davis Field. “We’re going to get going with some good old fashioned slut shaming.”

Smock’s unscripted sermon lasted nearly four hours at what she dubbed the “University of Slutty Carolina” on Feb. 12. But this was far from her first homily. 

“I’m 67 … six-seven,” she said as she moved her hands up and down. The self-proclaimed leader of the “Ho No Mo Revolution” has preached at hundreds of universities in the past 47 years, often to enraged heckling by generations of students. 

Smock said she didn’t find a college audience that understood her until Gen Z came along. 

“I’ve used satire for 47 years,” she said. “But Gen Z has a much better sense of humor than the millennials had. They had no sense of humor, nothing was funny and they couldn’t get satire. And if they could get it they were mad.”

Smock went viral on TikTok in 2021, when clips from her sermon received 3 million ‘likes.’ Since then, her TikTok following has climbed to more than 414,000. 

Smock’s virality made her well recognized. Some students were there for the spectacle of her attack on the various categories of ho’s: beau’s ho, oopsie ho, establishment ho, mega ho, giga ho and vampire ho. 

While much of her lecture targeted her female audience, she didn’t let the men off easily either. She reprimanded the “man ho’s” in the crowd, telling them that just because a woman is dressed provocatively doesn’t mean they should think they can take advantage of her.  

Smock passed out “Ho No Mo” pins to participants and “Never a Ho” pins to those who could pass an interrogation on their purity. 

Senior sports entertainment management major Brandon Miller received a “Never a Ho” pin after Smock asked rather intrusive questions about his virginity. 

“I plead the fifth on that one,” he answered when asked if his conversation with Smock was in earnest.

Senior biological sciences student Michaela Sanders was ecstatic to be among the first students to receive a “Ho No Mo” pin that day. 

“I just felt this thrill and excitement,” Sanders said. “She’s honestly quite an icon, and I look up towards her. I think she’s bringing a lot of laughs, and that’s all that matters.”

But looking past her funny catchphrases such as, “Hell is hot. Don’t be a thot,” some find Smock’s views controversial. 

“She genuinely is a super evangelical Christian,” freshman journalism and political science student Lilly Oppelt said over the cackling of onlookers. “I feel like she’s hurting that cause by doing this, because this is making people like that seem ridiculous.”

One of Smock’s main criticisms in the past was her hostility toward the LGBTQ+ community.

“I have bashed gays for four and a half, almost five decades,” she told a reporter. “And I don’t know what happened, they fell in love with me and made me a gay icon. The gays have taught me that love is love. But I have also told them that lust is lust.”

Married couple Dr. Woody Courtney and Sister Corinne Courtney joined Smock on her tour of schools in the Southeast. Students clapped and chanted along to their musical duets with lyrics such as, “Are you gonna text him nudes tonight?” to which the crowd recited, “No!”

Sister Cindy may denounce premarital copulation now, but a 20-year-old Cindy Lasseter at the University of Florida in the 1970s certainly did not, Smock said. 

“I was a ho,” Smock said. “I have not always been a good girl.”

Of Smock’s six levels of “ho”, she claimed that her younger self was at the sixth and most dastardly level, a “vampire ho,” who attempted to seduce virtuous men. 

That was until she met Pastor Jed Smock in 1977, who convinced her to leave her life as a “ho” and turn to Christ. The couple married four years later and had five children and 14 grandchildren. They traveled around the country preaching together until Brother Jed’s passing in 2022. 

Reports of the couple’s antics date to Nov. 30, 1990, when the University of Georgia’s student newspaper, The Red and Black, reported on their visit. 

“For the duration of any sidewalk savior’s stay, crowds of students surround the preacher to alternately heckle him or absorb his don’t-or-die warnings for later consumption in a round of red-faced shouting, spitting, and sometimes plain disbelief,” staff writer Lance Helms wrote.

Indeed, Raiford King, a 1990 USC graduate, remembers heckle-filled Smock appearances, particularly visits by their mentor, Brother Jim. 

“He would come and just stir up the crowd,” King said. “I mean a hardcore fundamentalist Baptist (visiting) a college of debauchery. And it was. USC was the No. 1 party school those years. I always thought it vaudevillian.”