Lobster in a Bucket

Results are in

Well we had the meetings, the RA's of Sutherlands, Ghetto, South, Central, 1st Belz, and Catacombs were in attendance. We represented the side that had serious misgivings about the new definition of what counts as public nudity. On the other "side" was John David Bower, the RA of the Five Points, and Emily Gosselink RD of Mac/Rymer. Who, needless to say, didn't have any particular problem with the new rule.

Well Covenant's position is basically this. Covenant does not want to be sued. It regularly and routinely gets complaints and threats from dissafected staff, factulty, students, alumni, parents, trustee members, and company who hear or see instances of nudity that they found offensive. Some of these groups could sue the school. In that event the school would have a hard time arguing that the hallway of a school dorm is not a public place. JD compared the hallway of say Catacombs to the hallway of say a hotel, or one's frontyard. According to JD, the school in its literature speaks of dorm halls in a way that it would have a hard time proving to a judge in court that a dorm hall is anything but private.

In addition to this there are male students at Covenant who struggle with homosexuality. These male students are needlessly frustrated and tempted my male nudity.

Also there are certain students at Covenant who are heterosexual but not comfortable with male nudity. They find it offensive and makes them feel isolated from those who do nude activities. This is especially harmful for those who live on a hall (such as ours) that has nude activities (such as hall ball).

In the schools mind these are all good reasons to include the dorm hall as part of the public domain in defining public nudity.

On the flip side, all the good things that come out of nude hall activites the school feels could be just as easily accomplished within the confines of the bedrooms of the hall or with a little bit of creativity.

In their cost benefit analysis the benefits of keeping nudity in the bedroom/bathroom far outweighs the negatives.

Now I find this defense completely unsatisfactory. But I've had a long day that still has more day in it. I'll save my response for some later point.

The hall has decided that at this point obeying or disobeying this rule is not our only option. The 6 guys RA's don't support the definition are going to appeal this all the way to the top. Our next meeting will be with Scott Raymond. After that President Neilson, and then the school board, maybe even eventually the PCA General Assembly. As long as we're in this process, we want to make our case strong as possible by obeying the rules until we get them changed.

For now, I would greatly appreciate it if any person who ever enjoyed the benefits of nude hall activities would email Scott Raymond the Dean of Students at Covenant College talking about what a positive and sanctimonius force nudity was in their life.

A second note, you can make ball-like objects out of things like socks and duck-tape and use them on your hall to your hearts content.

I appreciate your prayers, and would appreciate more of them, over the next weeks and probably months, as this thing is pushed to resolution.

Posted by matt at August 27, 2003 7:03 PM | TrackBack