The History of UCSC Chapter 19477, In All Its Naked Glory.

A few years ago I had the privilege to work with, among other wonderful people, an awsome artist/technologist, Timothy Jordan on a dance telematica project called Lubricious Transfer.

Some months ago I discovered that Timothy has an excellent program on KZSC, the UCSC radio station. I usually only get to hear the last 10-15 minutes of it after I get off work. But Timothy mentioned to me a few weeks ago that, as I should have guessed, there is a podcast of it.

So I have been catching up on the rest of his shows during the past week or so and I just recently heard one episode called "the naked/transparent show". On it he had an interview with "the naked guy" who apparently used to ride around campus naked and once went to class that way (I thought there was also a "naked guy" at Berkeley at one point too).

Back when M.R.C. Greenwood was chancellor someone in my office said that she had made a statement that UCSC was no longer a clothing optional university. I had always assumed she made this statement as part of the never-ending campaign by UCSC administration to make UCSC seem a safe, boring conventional place that parents will feel comfortable sending their kids. But in the interview "the naked guy" said that he had asked Marcie specifically why she had made that decision and she said it was because she herself was too old to go naked anymore to which he replied that you are never too old to be naked.

I found that a fascinating thing for her to say even though I still believe that the main reason she did this was for PR, I think it is a fascinating comment on our society in general and on UCSC in particular that the people in charge feel that because they are uncomfortable with something for themselves, they should prohibit it for everyone else.

In the interview they also touched on various other instances of spontaneous nakeditity on the UCSC campus and I thought it would be amusing to recount my own personal memories of UCSC as a clothing optional university. I am sure that other alumni from my era (77 off and on through 83) or before can tell much more outrageous stories than I can but here is what I remember.

Of course most people at UCSC nowadays knows about the Porter run: the first rainy day of the season scores of students run naked from Porter across campus through other colleges and places. Sadly, I have read that the last few years the number of spectators has been greater than the actual participants. What a wonderful liberating thing that must have been the first few years it happened to be able to run free through all outdoors without clothing.

A few years running when we first moved to Kerr Hall we would see them running past the loading dock, usually near the end of the afternoon. A great joyous crowd of kids rambling up the street. I think they must have had drums or some other musical instruments with them. Someone working by the windows would usually pipe up with something like "oh, here come the naked people" and everyone would stop work for a moment to watch them go by. it was fun but not really any big deal. Just another quirky thing that made UCSC a great and wonderful place unlike any other in the world.

Now here I feel I must pause to say that, although I understand that UCSC was more wild and crazy in the few years before I was a student there, other than a few things like the Porter run, it has really become quite socially conventional and staid in the past few years. It is not much different socially than any other university now albeit with a progressive bent.

I would also like to say that even when it was at its wildest, there was an incredible amount of truly high quality scholarship and learning that went on at UCSC. I remember in 1977, the wildest of the years that I attended UCSC, someone told me that 85% of the psychology majors at UCSC got into grad schools. Apparently that is a very high percentage compared to most schools.

And the students at UCSC have always predominantly been more interested in real learning rather than just getting a degree. There are always a few students who don't feel that way but the majority have always been here to learn.

So, back to the narrative:

When came back to UCSC as a staff member a year or two before MRC came on board, there were students, mostly involved in the campus AIDS awareness group, who would ride bikes around campus nude. I believe they gave out free condoms and I imagine AIDS prevention literature. Unfortunately the shot of a group of them saying goodby to a favored former chancellor ended up on the cutting room floor.

Working backwards in time, I know that the College V/Kresge meadow was still used then for nude sunbathing as it had been in my day. Again, it was never any big deal, just a comfortable place to lie out on a sunny day. I don't know if this still goes on but I assume not.

Jumping back to the beginning of my years at UCSC and working forward now, I remember the first day or two that I was at UCSC one of my housemates showed me a photo of his old housemates from the year before when he lived in the sextets (I was rather dissappointed when I found out they were named that because they housed six people). The had gotten together a few days before for a reunion dinner and had taken a group naked photo under the naked guy statue on the front of the Kresge Town Hall. I think He said it was taken about 2 in the morning.

Not too much later in the year, before halloween in any case, I walked up to the Idler Cafe, the student co-op cafe that was then next to the Town Hall. Just inside of the front door there was a counter with a clothes check girl and boy. They explained that it was "nude night at the Idler" that night. They took each person's clothes as they came in the door and gave them a claim ticket of some sort I guess (where would we have put a claim ticket though?).

Throughout the night there were a variety of games and activities. The only one I can remember was a game where one person passed an orange held under their chin to the person next to them.

As I was standing by the front counter a couple came in from one of the other colleges (Stevenson I think). Even at that time, most of the other colleges were relatively more conservative than Kresge. I remember having a conversation with the girl in the couple and finding it amusing that she was very careful not to look anywhere other than the eyes of the person she was talking to.

There was someone filming the evening who I think was working on a history of Kresge project. I remember he said that a copy of it would go in the Kresge College archives. I would love to see a copy of that film someday and see if I was really as skinny as I remember myself being.

Halloween of that year, the girlfriend of a friend of mine (who I think had been the clothes check girl and boy) dressed as a male flasher. Her costume was incredibly believable. Part of it was made of a bunch of stockings stuck into another stocking.

Unfortunately I was not aware that there was a hot tub at Kresge until they shut it down. I believe 1977-78 was the last year that it was open. It was upstairs in the building by the volleyball court, upstairs over what at that time was a weight room. I think I was told it was closed down because people splashed too much water on the floor and it leaked down into the room below but I think it was also because the preceptors whose apartments were next to it couldn't sleep with all the noise and naked revelers.

Other than the casual clothing optional attitude in many of the apartments at Kresge, most of the rest of the stories I have relate as well to the sexual climate at Kresge at that time which is a much larger topic and will have to wait for another time.

--Peace

An Occasional Santa Cruzan