Nudity in Hall Commons Areas at Covenant Banned

Commentary Section:

I'm frustrated about this rule for a number of reasons.

First: nudity as it is practice on the hall was effectively been a form for building relationships and community by encouraging an air of openness and by challenging judgmental stigmas and stereotypes that work contrary to a Christian inter-relational ethic.

Secondly: It takes what I believe to be an unhealthy legislative step into the personal lives of the students. I do not want to make the mistake of the slippery slope fallacy, but it seems to set a precedent that scares me. Good living at Covenant has always been best encouraged by healthy relationships among the students, faculty, and staff. It cannot, and will not ever be strengthened by creating more rules that are not grounded in Scripture or Christian tradition.

Thirdly: It panders to the parents of students at Covenant. When parents send their kids off to college they should have a proper understanding of what that entails. It is, in a very large sense, choosing to slowly give up the previously necessary micro-management of their children's lives. You can shelter your kids when they're 8, but its increasily unhealthy to do so when they're 18 and older.

This is particularly true for the large number of naive, sheltered homeschooled kids that Covenant attracts. These kids need to have their walls broken down, their narrow worldviews challenged, etc. etc. etc. If the school starts a policy of changing policy everytime a parent calls to complain about a story their son/daughter reported to them of a crazy college activity, it's only a matter of time before we look little different in our Student Life policy from Bob Jones.

fourthly and finally: Covenant, as a college that claims to believe in integrating faith, learning, and life; viewing education as a holistic endeavor, it's hard to see how regulating student activities in this fashion is any different, in form, from parents dictating to a English professor what books he can or cannot teach in his class. This is a mistake.

All right, speaking as a fomer sheltered, naive home-schooled kid, Covenant was the best thing that could've happened to me as far as social and interpersonal-relationship building skills are concerned. I built strong and lasting friendships with guys on Catacombs, closer than any other friendships I have, save one. I'm not going to say that nudity was absolutely necessary for those friendships to occur, but it definitely helped facilitate an atmosphere of mutual acceptance and openness. All (metarphorically and literally) my imperfections were laid bare and I was still accepted and loved (platonically!) by my brothers there. Hall life is one of my fondest memories of my time at Covenant. This seems like an unnecessary and detrimental step towards uniformity, blandness and totalitarianism by the school authorities.

Gosey. E-mail them. The addresses are at the end of my last post on it costing money to come to Covenant early.

in these frightening days of sexual litigation, I'm not at all surprised at this.

[devil's advocate]
blame those who took it too far in the first place. if they'd have kept it down, there would be no need to legislate
[/devil's advocate]

outside the covenant world, this is a very strange discussion, although i have met grads from other Xn schools that had similar experiences with nudity

The problem here is that there are basically three types of people here at Covenant. Those who want to be here, those whose parents sent them here, and those who don't know why they're here.

The decided that this was the place they wanted to go do so, as far as I can tell, mostly for one of two reasons. These are, more often than not, some of the best and brightest Covenant has to offer, for they have decided to come to Covenant on their own initiative, frequently under opposition from parents and/or friends and family. They're either attracted by the Reformed tradition, or attracted by a Christian college that doesn't have an overabundance of rules. This new policy does a direct disservice to these students, for it takes away personal freedom and moves ever closer to fundamentalism (towards which we have drifted a decent amount in my four years).

The second type are kids whose parents sent them here, sometimes hoping they'd turn into the first kind of student, but more often than not because they want their kids to get "fixed" at a Christian school. There are way, way too many of these people here. The new policy directly attempts to attact this kind of student by removing an issue about which this kind of parent would be nervous. Fie upon them.

The last kind of student doesn't really know why they're here. These are the people who picked a Christian school voluntarily, but kind of at random. A lot of these people arrive not knowing that Covenant is PCA affiliated (do your research people, please! especially before ranting in public). Generally, these people tend to be opposed to things like nudity as well, again, in keeping with overall fundamentalist traits.

So overall, by instituting a policy like this, they make most people happy. Certainly the administration, which seems totally incapable of removing the bunch from its panties.

Boys. I'll never understand them.

It is probably much easier for Catacombians to be naked in their commons. But for FB where there are windows on our doors and girls walking by ever 10 minutes (who regularly like to walk through our commons to the other side, which IS against the rules). It makes sense to institute a policy like this. So that girls don't loose their 'virgin' eyes (even though it is their own fault for looking).

By the way, the commons isn't the only place to hold hall meetings, bible studies, etc. Try one of your rooms, get naked all you want. And by squeezing 24ish people into one room will add to your closeness ;-)

As a popularizer of "responsible-nuddity" in the years of '92-'97 at Covenant...

and as an opponent of the authority abusing, power hungry administration during those same years...

I have to say: phooie on the bloody fundamentalists!

As far as the idea that hall nudity is a good thing, I am pretty sure I agree. To be honest (and to echo Gosey, for I too am an ex-sheltered home school kid), I feel closer to the guys on the 'Combs than almost anyone else I know.

My feeling is that if Covenant is going to deny us our ability to be naked in our commons, and if their reason for doing so is to call our commons a "public place," then they should actually make those areas open to the public. As it is, we are unable to be naked OR have open dorms. Either way I get a strong feeling that there will still be naked foosing or hallball regardless.

baus, nice to see you on here... how's DC? find work yet?

oh, and baus - move your blog to chattablogs or covblogs. its a revolution, man.

Beware of saying Covenant is moving to fundamentalism. If you go back to when Covenant was first established the rules were pretty similar to what Bob Jones has today: strict dress codes, curfews, whatnot. Even within the last several years, Covenant has eased up, specifically on the dancing issue.

I still think this rule is dumb (and one of the best ways to encourage hall nudity), but I'd be careful before pronouncing overall trends.

Another issue that could be playing a role is lawsuits. Scott Raymond told me once that he gets threatened by one either once a week or once a month. This could be related to that.

Lastly, I don't know baus - but if you're near Baltimore, check out Baltiblogs.com, chattablogs sister site.

Covenant, over the past year or so, seems to have become ensconced with destroying every faction of hall untiy and bonding.

The ridiculous aspect of this no nudity decision is that Covenant defines halls in two totally different ways: as PUBLIC (as in the hall nudity) and PRIVATE (open dorms, security guards can't come on to halls, etc.). They simply pick and choose how they want to define the hall area depending on the event, which is ridiculous.

Over the past year or so, I have seen a constant string of senseless and unjustifiable policies and decisions spew out of control from the beurocracy that Student Development has become. As a result, I am finding it harder and harder to recommend Covenant to anyone.

I thnk that's a big reason, maph. I got a reply from John D. Bower yesterday, eseentially saying that Georgia law forbids nudity in public places and, due to parental/student/faculty concerns, the school is changing it's stance on the nudity issue. He closed that discussion with this(I quote): "The Georgia state law made arguments for public nudity a non-issue." So that's that, as far as the school is concerned. I understand it as far as truly public places go, but a hall and its commons are hardly public, any more than my apartment is public.

eSSEntially, that is. :)

I seriously, seriously, wonder just how/what/where/when Georgia law forbids nudity in the hall commons area. It certainly isn't a NEW thing. I have a hard time believing that motivation for this new rule comes solely with wanting to comply with the state more thoroughly. This new rule is about two things

1. parents
2. the personal tastes of the administration

What we need is somebody to find out what exactly the state of Georgia says about nudity. I mean, c'mon, there are far far crazier things that go on at big universities.

Look, in general, I'm in favor of abolishing Student Development all together.

But aren't there more important things to be concerned and/or upset about?

What, like politics?

Seriously though, most of the people upset over this are people who came to Covenant and made an incredible group of very close friends that they hadn't ever had before. We also feel that there were certain things unique to Covenant that we love, and may or may not have helped us have that great community. Covenant's a unique place (how many dang times have we heard that), and I and many others do not want to see it become just another nameless, soul-less, bland "Christian" college.

And personally, I think Student Development is about as close to the heart & soul of Covenant as any of it's "branches" could be (the heart & soul being the student body). I think it's immensely valuable.

I don't think a college should ever be about just punching your academic time-card.

Basically, Student Development is admitting that their closed-dorm policy has failed. If it hadn't, this would be a non-issue. Their solution to the failure of one of their rules? A new rule! I love a bureaucracy. Surely if one rule didn't work, what we really need is another one.

In all seriousness, legislation has never been the solution to most personal/inter-personal problems. Prohabition, the current war on drugs, copyright laws, speed limits, all of these serve mostly to create things for the government to do, but do very little to change anyone's behavior. All that is really being accomplished is training people to despise authority for not being able to enforce its decisions. If you can't and/or won't enforce a law, it isn't a law. It's a challenge and a joke.

Maphet: I'm going to have to plead ignorance as to the state of fundamentalism at Covenant before my arrival. It is true that we no longer have a dress-code or things of that nature. But I've been here for 3 years now, and my impression has been one of strengthening, not relaxing the rules. My freshman year, there were plenty of upperclassmen who came back early to help the freshmen move in. Now it'll cost you $70 a day. Previously, pranks were semi-encouraged, or at least tolerated in good humor. Catacombs was penalized for almost all of last semester for doing things far more innocuous than events that were left unpunished in years past. Previously, if you lived off campus they didn't really care whether or not you decided to drink. Now they'll ask for a 1040 to prove your financial independence.

And who are the people that do wind up getting busted? The flagrant pothead drunkards? Sometimes, but it's usually the people who maybe have the occasional beer or smoke but aren't consciously trying to defy anyone. They're the easy targets: the real problem folks generally don't get much attention as far I've been able to tell. When I discussed this issue with my RD last year, he basically said that Student Development was counting on students to turn each other in. Thus cementing in stone the Catacombs motto for '01-'02: Tell us who you party with and you won't get in trouble.

My overall impression is that things hit a real peak in the late 90s, but have been slowly tapering off.

Seems that there's two ways to look at all this:

1) Student Development is out to get the students and make Covenant College fundamentalist

2) Students, in the last several years, have abused too many of the privileges Covenant provides, and SD is attempting to cope.

I'm sure that SD is/has been making mistakes. In my experience, they will freely admit that. Covenant students seem much less ready to do so.

But Ryan, here's another theory about Covenant's direction: In the mid-90s, there was at least a minorit of students who believed passionately in something larger than their own personal education or freedom. They had a vision of living exciting, meaningful lives in the context of their belief system. They wanted to make movies, take photos, write new theology. And they drank, smoked and got crazy naked as an afterthought. Community arose.

But slowly, the viewpoint of this minority of students has narrowed. Now the drinking, smoking and nudity is the point itself. In some ways, this may reflect a shift in the student body at large: living unique, distinctive lives for a greater purpose is less important than finishing four years with a degree and getting into a good grad school. This shift has affected classroom atmosphere as well: Students are less engaged with the material, more interested in their grades than they were even my freshman year.

So is student development cracking down more? Possibly, but it seems to me that the traditions they're cracking down on have become rather hollow. If I could give any advice to current students (not that it'd be worth much), I'd tell them to stop worrying over rule changes, nd devote energy to engaging their study and each other like it really mattered, like the possibility of Covenant students changing the world, and themselves, were real and within reach. In five minutes they'll be doing so many things that offend parents that the administration won't have enough ink to make rulebooks. Although if this attitude pervaded the campus, I suspect Student Development wouldn't really mind the hassle.

Don't worry about defending the old. Create something new and meaningful with those you love.

Maphet, but I have a hard time seeing how the events of the last couple years were any worse than some of the things that occured during my first couples years, and occured before that (from the stories I've heard).

What's different is that it's different people in Student Development. At the end of the day, Barb Scheur was always, always willing to take it for the team (the students). Seems like the current admin, while having thoughtful reasons, aren't when it comes down to it willing to take it for the students.

The mark of a leader isn't the rules they enforce, but how they sacrifice for the people they serve.

Agreed.

And the mark of a godly man, whether leader or follower, is his willingness to sacrifice personal preferences for the greater good of the unity of the body of Christ. cf. Romans 12 & 14, among many others.

Perhaps since I have only limited Covenant nudity experience I can't appreciate the situation, but this doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Clothing was something apparently instituted at the fall as a reaction to our own sinfulness. We first covered ourselves in shame and then God clothed us on our way out of the garden (in what one could possibly regard as the first record of shed blood, the animal's that is). Due to our sin nature it seems that we have a bit of a responsibility to a certain level of modesty. As I recall the whole issue with someone seeing Noah's "nakedness" was either a euphemism for homosexuality or just plain a disgrace to be seen naked (Genesis 9:20-24) and that was inside Noah's tent. I'm not one for only quoting one place in Scripture and then stating that this is an example of why we MUST do something... but it gives me reason to suspect that nakedness might not be the oh so honorable issue you make of it.

Right on Matt K.

I don't rightly see how charging $70/day for getting back early, or banning playing outdoor sports on halls (which is probably aimed more at Ghetto than Catacombs, since it's Ghetto that sets off the fire alarms playing hallball), or even banning nudity is Fundamentalist.

As for the $70/day, it cost Covenant money if people get back early, and with the budget crunch, it makes sense. Technically, people weren't supposed to get back early before either.

As for the no sports on halls, it makes sense, what with Ghetto setting off fire alarms all the time, as well as the new networking equipment on the halls.

And, as for the nudity thing, well, Covenant folk already know what I think about that, so I don't need to rehash, but banning nudity in public areas on the hall isn't fundamentalist. Society doesn't exactly approve of public nudity, and if Covenant's lawyers say that legally, the hallways and commons are considered public for the purposes of GA law, well then, I'd rather not have the negative publicity if someone decided to sue, because I seriously doubt that the average person on the street is going to buy the arguments that have been given in favor of nudity, and I really don't think that General Assembly would buy the arguments either. When it comes to legal issues, I'd rather have Covenant err on the side of caution.

BTW, why is it that the homeschoolers always get the bad rap as the narrow, sheltered ones? It wasn't the homeschoolers who gave me a hard time about listening to Eminem, or taking my little brother to see R-rated movies, or any number of other things. I agree though, that Covenant students tend to be too pollyannaish, which drove me nuts at times.