From: matt@physics2.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: soc.women
Subject: Re: Naked Man on Campus
Date: 13 Nov 92 23:01:43 GMT
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
Distribution: usa
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics2.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: lmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com's message of 13 Nov 92 19:43:48 GMT

In article <1e10hkINNrbb@transfer.stratus.com> lmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Laurie Mann) writes:

> I know they generally aren't.  I have mixed feelings about this.  On
> the one hand, I hate dress codes and the like.  I dress pretty
> casually.  On the other hand, I believe in wearing clothes most of
> the time.  I think the guy ought to be wearing at least modest
> amounts of clothing in public.  (Also, I'm under the impression it's
> usually cold and rainy in Berkeley---aside from making a point about
> free expression, is he nuts?)

OK, as an Official Berkeley Resident, I suppose it's my duty to say
something about "the naked guy."  (I'm a bit reluctant to post,
considering that this isn't really very germane so soc.women, but
then, it's probably no less germane than most of what shows up here.)

First of all, just as for climate: Berkeley certainly isn't the land
of sun and palm trees, but neither is it normally cold and rainy.  (It
especially isn't rainy around here, since we're in the middle of a
drought.) I almost never need to wear a jacket here.  I tend to wear
long pants in the winter, but then, I'm a wimp; I know people who wear
shorts all year round.  And anyway, this fellow only started going
around naked in the summer; just climate-wise, I don't think that's
terribly insane.

I don't find this fellow offensive, nor do most of the people I've
talked to.  He's been reasonably low-key about this.  The city of
Berkeley doesn't have an ordinance prohibiting public nudity, but,
like most cities, it has an ordinance against disturbing the peace.
When police have asked "the naked guy" to put his clothing on, he
hasn't made a fuss, but just done it.  (Often, he goes around wearing
a loincloth.)

I don't think that his point is so much a demonstration for freedom of
expression; he believes that nudity, in and of itself, is important.
I don't know why; I've never talked to him.  It's clear, though, that
he considers this a moral issue.  (Me, I have trouble understanding
why anyone would care so much about nudity as he does; I have no
problem with hot tubs or nude beaches, but someone who cares this much
about it puzzles me.)

So my sympathies aren't entirely with "the naked guy," but they are
decidedly against the UCB administration.  After a couple months of
this, they suddenly and unilaterally imposed a regulation prohibiting
nudity, and, before they even told anyone about the regulation, they
used it to punish the naked guy---they told him that if he showed up
on campus, either nude or clothed, he would be arrested for
tresspassing.  They weren't interested in discussion, just in
capitulation.

They said that the only occasion on which he would be allowed on
campus without getting arrested was for a quasi-judicial hearing; it
was on that occasion that he showed up naked.  In his place, I think I
might have done the same thing, just to protest this harsh and
heavy-handed treatment.  Whether or not walking around naked is
appropriate, the actions that the administration took were grossly
disproportionate to anything that this guy did.

--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!