Undressing K's Naked Culture

“We’re trying to redefine nudity here at K in order to desexualize it,” says former LandSea participant and two-time leader Katja Samati K’10. “That’s pretty progressive.”

The two main events boasted by Kalamazoo College’s naked culture, the naked swim on LandSea, and the streaking of the quad after Frelon performances, have become part of K lore.

Many freshman tick the former off their To Do lists just before school starts, as they are met by encouraging LandSea patrol leaders, many of whom are past participants and well acquainted with the tradition.

Naked swimming is exactly what first inured me to K’s naked culture. But to back up a moment, having never before slept outside, much less in the woods of Canada, and having never spoken to any of the eleven strangers with whom I spent eighteen days traversing nature on foot and in canoe, my comfort level was already low and quickly waning.

Throw nudity into the mix and, well, my compass was pointed East, back to New York, back to civilization, back to shame, and black tops and black bottoms, faster than you could say, “How does this breeze make my butt look?”

Needless to say, I got over it. I didn’t have much of a choice.

Though neither nudity nor naked swimming appear in the college-sponsored LandSea pamphlet, they both make waves all over Killarney National Park, the site of the college’s esteemed experiential learning program.

Samati explains the program termed the phrase “naked swimming” for three reasons: first, to replace the loaded phrase “skinny-dipping;” second, to desexualize the act; and third, to be sensitive to the complications, that for many, arise from public nudity.

Nakedness on LandSea is not required, but any past participant can tell you that it is encouraged. Intended to liberate participants and to teach acceptance of bodies and of genders, naked swimming is absolutely not about making nakedness sexual, says Samati.

“On LandSea, part of the draw and appeal of being naked is to take away from the physical,” she says. “Certain boundaries drop, and when you don’t have to worry about what other people think of you, and you don’t have to think about other people judging your body, it becomes less of a big deal.”

Once outside of Killarney Park’s deep blue lakes, and finally back on K’s campus, public nudity finds yet another niche in quad streaking.

For serial streakers like Jared Devitt K’10, it’s about the momentary thrill and the bonding experience shared among the participants.

Thinking back to his first experience, Devitt comments, “I certainly felt closer to those guys afterward. Everyone does; it’s kind of a collective feeling.”

For him, like Samati, there’s nothing sexual about running around in the nude. In fact, Devitt attributes the sexualized messages surrounding streaking to voyeurs who choose to observe rather than to participate.

“What really helps consistently around here is the idea that you can’t really get arrested for it,” he says. “At the same time, it helps that I know a lot these people, and I think they know me.”

Public nudity or indecent exposure, skinny-dipping or naked swimming, call it what you will: a bare body is as simple as it sounds.

Or, I’ve learned, at least it should be.

A mere, unclothed body will remain just that until the police are called, or hecklers assemble, at which point the body is forcibly sexualized by outside observers. Male or female, sober or drunk, its owner is subject to legal action.

But, fortunately for freedom, there are of course exceptions. At the esteemed University of California Berkeley, for example, a public school, stipulations have been carefully devised to allow for a practical clothing optional policy—that is, institutionalized allowance and acceptance of public nudity—within “academic programs or classes,” performing arts productions, in gymnasiums, pools, and more.

Reading between the lines, UC Berkeley has authorized nudity in all of the confined spaces over which it has direct control, leaving the outside the only area under which local law enforcement has jurisdiction.

Berkeley, like Kalamazoo College, however, is careful to begin its liberal statement by declaring any “lewd or sexually offensive conduct, including indecent exposure and public nudity,” disallowed.

That’s because being naked in public can be grounds for sexual offender status, perhaps one of the most socially inhibiting and professionally detrimental titles attainable in the United States.

Currently, the American Civil Liberty’s Union is waging a campaign to “protect nudity as a constitutionally sheltered freedom of expression,” but as is currently the case in Michigan—as is the case in most other states—public nudity, be it in the form of streaking, taking a casual afternoon walk, or urinating behind a dumpster, is deemed a misdemeanor.

And it takes just two charges of indecent exposure to relegate one to the sex offender registry, a database the Michigan legislature devised for “a person who…poses a potential serious menace and danger to the health, safety, morals, and welfare of the people.” In the eyes of the law, there is no differentiation made between nudist and child molester, student streaking after Frelon and pedophile.

And while some may argue there is no need for distinction, many others, including K College students and faculty members, disagree. The heart of their argument? Nudity is not inherently sexual, nor should it be treated as anything more than an expression, or exploration, of self.

In a May 1, 2009 email statement sent from Dean Sarah Westfall to all students, it is stated “…spring quarter is a time when the ‘K’ tradition of streaking comes alive…Because streaking has not historically been problematic at ‘K,’ the campus has not contacted the police for assistance in managing the crowds…”

The dean goes on to very clearly state: “Though the College does not condone illegal behavior, like streaking, your help is essential in ensuring that it does not become a problematic or dangerous tradition if and when it occurs.”

When traditions, like the streaking and naked swimming called for by K’s nudie culture, oppose the laws laid out by greater society, the nature of their implementation is immediately called into question.

“I think what the administration is saying is that us, as a post-secondary educational institution, are not police and the scope or our practice is to teach and educate,” said clinical psychologist and psychology professor Charles Livingston. “If it’s not in their [the administration’s] mission statement, if it’s not in their scope of practice, then it’s a legal issue.”

And that’s why Americans generally, and K kids specifically, are in danger each time they strip in the name of glorious liberation, or life-altering transition, or even just blurry-eyed drunkenness.

Surely if the administration deemed streaking an indecent behavior, it would not be tolerated or encouraged, albeit passively.

Specifically regarding streaking, Professor Livingston says, “It’s not an act of sex, in my opinion. It’s an act of freedom, an act of transition, it’s just drunkenness, but it’s not a sexual act.”

“We need to reference the culture the behavior occurs in, as well as the individual doing the streaking,” he says.

The cultural context for nudity remains contested generationally, geographically, and between political parties, but critically, none of these qualifiers are mutually exclusive, and thus, the issue only grows.

If the large-scale nudity at last Sunday’s Senior Pig Roast is any indicator, the naked culture at K remains undeterred, even in the face of potential prosecution. One might say that’s the price of freedom.