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In This Issue

• Celebrate Our Appendix!
• Alternative Motherhood
• Gossip and Nudity: Interview with the Gossip
• Letters to the Feditors
• The Colombia Spectador
• Yowie! How the Brazilians do bikini wax
• Making Waves
• Am I Naked or Nude?
• Marauding Interviewer: Dwarves Fascinated by Own Pants
• Big Nudity Exam
• Point – Counterpoint
• ‘Is It Cold In Here?’
• News Briefs
• News Quiz: Do you know about the important events going on in your world?
• Eight Situations In Which I Am Naked
• Get Your Hands Off Me You Damn, Dirty Apes
• Naked Haikus
• Naked Horoscopes
• This is Not a Naked Santa
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 16.8

Katie O'Shea

The powers that be at Columbia College have established a nifty little system in order to see every student in a bathing suit at least once before graduation. It's called the swim test, and yes, SEAS students are exempt (the administration would prefer that they keep their clothes on). Swim tests are a rare thing for colleges to require these days, but Columbia holds strong to its need to examine the lines and curves of the student body. With all the movie star flesh that seems to be going through our system these days, who can blame them?

Last October, a group of 6 or 7 students of various years upped the stakes just a bit. However, rather than grabbing their latest Abercrombie swim wear before diving in, this small band of crusaders snuck into the Columbia pool after-hours... naked.

One of the girls in the group agreed to talk to the Fed. She also offered to show this writer the pictures she had taken. As she tells it, she was asleep in bed late one night, when a friend called her up. He was organizing an expedition to go skinny-dipping in the Dodge Fitness Center pool, and invited her along. Always game for an adventure, she grabbed her camera and went off to meet him and five of his friends. He had gotten the idea after hearing about a way to enter the pool room past closing. (His method has to remain confidential; that was one detail which the girl refused to share.)

Creeping in, the students were not confronted by any guards, but they saw plenty of custodial staffers. They were forced to talk to (a.k.a. "bribe") one of the cleaning men in order to enter the room with the pool itself, since it was locked. Once inside, all that remained was stripping and swimming, which they did poste-haste.

Actually, not everyone swam completely naked, the more timid in "the group held on to their boxers (or someone else's boxers, in the case of one of the girls). Cleaning men walked in and out, pretending to ignore the swimmers, except one who told them not to use the high dive. This raises an interesting question: does a belly flop hurt more when you're not wearing any clothes?

Avoiding the high dive, people engaged in other forms of harmless play, including swimming a few laps (preparing for the fateful swim test, apparently). They also borrowed some goggles and swim caps from the locker room, proving that even no outfit at all requires accessories.

To clear up a few details, she pointed out that while not ALL of the people in the group were sober, many were. Also, this was not sexual. "It wasn't like a big orgy in the pool," the girl explained. It was just a bunch of people recreationally swimming in the nude. They also spent some time on the trampoline, but again, it wasn't a sex thing. Since October, the girl has been invited back on a trip or two, but declined, not being a big fan of water in general. "If there were an orgy happening next time, I would probably go again," she asserted, but otherwise she plans to sit out. Columbia College, meanwhile, is biding its time for the day she has to get into the pool before the watchful eyes of the Physical Education staff and swim her two laps to graduate. She'll probably wear a bathing suit for that, but who knows?