Dowbrigade

Bennington Outlaws Public Nudity

BENNINGTON, Vt. (Reuters) – Students occasionally parading
buck naked around Vermont’s Bennington College campus has been a tolerated,
if peculiar, part of the university’s student culture here since the
1960s.

Now Robert Graves, hired this year as Bennington’s dean of students, has embarked
on a crusade against public nudity — one that has run afoul of the school’s
free-spirited students.

Students have long enjoyed an informal policy allowing them to go naked on campus.
Whether it was as a topless sunbather lounging on the lawn or students running
naked at an annual bonfire party, college officials turned a blind eye.

Lindsey Gage, a Bennington senior leading the fight to preserve what she concedes
is an unwritten policy, said she has grown accustomed to public nudity since
enrolling here.

"It is never lewd but a natural sight," she said.

American liberal arts colleges do not get much more liberal than Bennington.
Nestled in Vermont’s Green Mountains, the school has a nontraditional approach
to education in which students draw up their own curricula.

Another cherished collegiate tradition threatened by
the new American prudism and political correctness. No more peeping Tom
road trips up to Bennington….

from Reuters