On Monday, school started up for the three of them. Denise went with Amelia on her quick bus ride to school since her own Monday class started later. Denise wanted to be sure that Amelia felt secure in her trip there, the teen had such an air of shyness and vulnerability, it seemed.
“Amelia, sweetie,” Denise said as they were seating themselves in the bus. “It seems to me that you’re quite shy. Yet you still went out for performing in dramas and stuff. How does a shy person do that?”
Amelia shook her head slowly. “I don’t know, really. I think it’s ‘cuz I can become someone else and not have to be me. Then my pain and all doesn’t bother me as much and I can forget for a while.”
Alarm bells suddenly went off in Denise’s head; she realized that she herself had some of those feelings after her molestation... “What did her shrink call it...?” she thought, “oh yeah, ‘dissociative disorder,’ that was it... but at least Amelia’s handling her reality avoidance in a constructive way. Oh my, I need to keep this in mind and maybe see if she might need some kind of therapy if she seems to start to really lose touch with reality... that almost happened to me...”
She shook her head to clear it.
“Well, sweetie, you’ll get plenty of chances for acting here, it seems. I’ll bet you get the leading gal roles, too. Wonder what kind of guy your leading man will be, huh?” she joked.
“Oh yes, but I hope he’d be more grown up than some of the boys in my last school. All they wanted was to touch the girls ‘cuz they thought it was romantic. And the acting coach had to keep reminding them to look at who they were talking to and not at the audience,” she grinned. “Oh, look, our stop is next.”
They got out and walked the block to the school; Denise hugged her and told her to have a good day and reminded her that she and Kevin would be home about an hour after she got back from school. Then she hung back and watched Amelia make her way with the other kids into the building. It felt so strange.
“Is this what it’s like to send your kid off to school for the first time?” she wondered. “Wow, it feels like Amelia is not just my honorary little sister; I almost feel like I’m her mom—we’ve made such a bond. What a super person she is, I really hope her treatments work...”
Denise turned and left, departing for her first class in London.
~~~~
That evening the three shared their day’s events. Kevin was very keen to hear how Amelia’s day went; Denise had returned home a half hour earlier but Amelia would only tell her that the day was “good,” wanting to have Kevin hear everything too.
“Okay, your ‘brother’s’ here now, so spill it,” Denise ordered, as Kevin put down the bags of carry-out food he had brought in with him.
Kevin looked up and smiled. “Oh, you saved a morsel of news for me? I thought that Denise would have squeezed it all out of you and I’d only get the dregs.”
“Oh, Kevin, you’re so funny...” Amelia hugged him. “No, I wanted you to hear and didn’t want to do it twice.”
“So give,” Denise growled.
“I like it there! The teachers are nice and I made a couple of friends too. I’m not the only one new there. There were two new girls—just got here from India—twins—and one from Nigeria; they like acting too. And my subjects are interesting and the maths teacher is so cool! He does funny overacting things when he’s explaining something. He said he has to, it’s in his contract since the school is a performing arts specialty school. So he can’t just teach maths, he has to perform it.”
“So did they have a panties check?” Kevin grinned.
“Oh, Kevin, you’re too much,” Amelia smirked.
“Yeah, Kevin thinks he’s a comedian. He was like that in high school too, and we had to keep putting him in his place,” Denise mock-scowled at him.
“I think the humor was to lighten all that serious stuff that kept happening,” Kevin said soberly. “Gallows humor, waiting for the other shoe to drop,” he sighed.
“So true,” Denise confirmed. “Anything else? What about PE? How will you be doing your PE project?”
“That should work out good, I think. I have the notes in my bag. Since I can do some physical things, I’ll be doing some exercise and writing reports. And you said I can use the health club you took me to if I want. Let’s see what I remember; I just need to do twelve hours this term and do it in five different activities. I can do some at the school and some at the club. Like swimming and using some of the weight machines. And on Saturday we saw that tai chi class—I can get some videos of that on line and learn some postures. Walking on the school track or treadmill—oh yes, there was the elliptical leg thing at the club, too. I can go after school, right? Good.
“Then I need to turn in reports that explain what I did, amount of time spent on each, the physical benefits they have, the sports that those different exercises help in, and how popular they are among people in general, so I can do some of that research in school. And they said I don’t need a PE kit even if I do the walking and tai chi at school, just to wear pants and tee shirt or other comfortable clothes.”
“Well, that sounds really good then,” Kevin said. “Keeping up your muscle tone is very important and was one of the keys to my treatment too. But please wait until we have your first appointment before you do any stretching involving your groin muscles, okay? There might be moves you shouldn’t do at first.”
“Oh, I didn’t think of that.” Amelia said. “Do you think that I should do any of those things then?”
Kevin thought for a bit. “Well, swimming and walking are fine. If you use weight machines, maybe we should speak to one of the trainers at the club to see which ones would be best, to stay away from stretching the groin muscles. I know a little about tai chi; if you do the basic moves slowly, that shouldn’t be any problem either. But wait on that elliptical trainer machine ‘cause that can stress the groin and buttocks, okay? Same thing with the stair-stepper they have and the leg presses too. And if your pain level increases, let up on the intensity and you should be good.”
“So then I can do this for my class? Oh good, ‘cuz I need to do a contract thing with you and the teacher so you can sign for the things I do outside of school. I have a form to put this onto and I sign it and then you do.”
They went on talking about the subject classes Amelia was taking and then Denise looked at Kevin.
“So, report on your day, sir,” she ordered.
Amelia snickered. “Yeah, let’s grill him now.”
“So, after I took over the school and replaced all the profs with my cronies...” he began before their hooting drowned him out. “No, huh?” He looked crestfallen.
“Dumb comedian,” Denise muttered. “You jerk.” She winked at Amelia.
Kevin grinned at them. “Not much to say. But wow, those classes will sure be intense! They’ve got really sharp people teaching and the students are way more focused than at Avery, that’s for sure. This isn’t going to be a cakewalk, but we knew that. I’ve already got two research papers assigned and this was only day one. I’m sure you don’t care for the details and I’m not sure I could explain them myself, yet,” he chuckled. “Now it’s Denise’s turn. How’s the commuter school working?”
“Won’t know about commuting till tomorrow,” Denise said. “Monday’s at UIL only. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have classes at both. So yeah, it’s like you said. Intense. We found out what we’ll be covering and I think I’m gonna be pretty busy too. But the classes sound fabulous and I’ll enjoy them a lot, I think. I’ve got two new classes tomorrow at the ed school.”
~~~~
The following day continued to be quite chilly, the unusual London heat spell had broken over a week earlier and suddenly temperatures were now unseasonably low. It was overcast, rain threatened, and overnight temperatures had dropped to 53 degrees. Kevin had to translate the weather report’s 12 degrees to Fahrenheit for Denise; both he and Amelia were familiar with Celsius units. Everyone left for school early; Denise and Kevin traveled together and split up when Kevin had to change trains while Denise continued on to her new classes at the education school.
Her first class was statistics, and she felt fairly certain that the subject wouldn’t be any problem at all; this was more of a research class, applied statistics, than a theoretical one. Then, as she was on her way to her psych class in a nearby building, clenching her jacket against the chilling wind, she noticed a crying girl standing on a bench and surrounded by a few boys—absolutely naked except for her shoes and socks. Shivering. With the boys pawing at her crotch.
Startled, she ran over, pushed the boys apart, and threw her jacket over the girl, whose skin was tinted bluish and taut with goose bumps.
“Hey, you can’t do that,” one boy called. “I didn’t have my turn!”
Ignoring him, Denise pulled the girl off the bench, grabbed her pack, and hustled her into the nearby building.
“What the hell is going on,” she demanded of the girl.
“Naked in school—we have to do it...” she chattered.
“What? That’s only in high schools! It’s not here too, is it?”
“Yes. They just started it for teacher trainees...” the girl began, eyes filled with tears.
“Listen! I have to get to class—you get home and dress immediately or you’ll catch pneumonia or the flu. I’m not kidding! When are you free—can you meet me at... um... 3:50 later today? I have ideas about killing this nudity crap in its tracks. I have a class later at UIL but can get back here later. Meet me at the Union café, 3:50?”
She agreed.
“I’m Denise Roberts. You are?”
“Sharon Jones.”
“Okay—see you 3:50 then!” she called as she ran off, “return my jacket later!”
Denise made it to her class just before the instructor arrived, and found a seat, her pulse pounding in her temples.
“Holy shit,” she thought, “I can’t get away from this crap!”
The instructor began going over the material that would be covered that term and then he looked at the people in the class.
“Now, I’d like each of you to tell us your name and if you’ve taken any other kind of psych course, what it was about, so we’ll all know everyone’s general background.”
Members of the class began speaking and when Denise finished her turn, the instructor paused.
“Hmmm, yes, Miss Roberts, I have a note for you to see Dean Phillips after class today; his note says your schedule appears free then. He’s in room 322 in the Admin Building.”
Denise nodded, wondering what this was about.
After class, she went to Phillips’ office and his secretary showed her in, then took a seat in the room herself, her face settling into a sour expression. Denise gave her a puzzled look.
The dean spoke, “Ah, it’s good to meet you finally, Miss Roberts. You were not at the required orientation of the entering teacher education class yesterday morning.”
“Orientation? No sir, I wasn’t informed of any such orientation. In fact, I met with one of your advisors about ten days ago, that’s when I did my final registration paperwork, and she didn’t mention any orientation meeting; she told me that my two classes were confirmed. Nothing was said about any other things I had to do when classes started.”
Phillips looked at the secretary, who commented, “There isn’t a copy of the orientation letter that the new admits were sent in Miss Roberts’ file; actually none of the entering student instructions were sent to her, apparently.”
“Sir, may I ask if there’s a problem—and why is Mrs...” she glanced at the woman.
“Jaimeson,” she offered.
“Mrs Jaimeson is at our meeting, why?” Denise asked. “Um, one second, please.”
She palmed her mobile phone and activated its voice recording function. Kevin had taught her well.
Phillips spoke, “She’s here as an observer. Our school’s legal staff requires an observer to attend meetings like this one.”
“And what is the purpose of such a meeting if the lawyers have to tell you how to conduct them?” Denise asked mildly.
Mrs Jaimeson shifted in her seat, looking most uncomfortable.
“Miss Roberts, you missed the introductory orientation of the teacher education course where we covered the responsibilities of the students in this university. One of the new student responsibilities is given in this booklet...”
He passed her a copy of the booklet she had last seen being displayed by Jeremy Porter, the one with the naked teens on the cover.
“I’ve seen this booklet before, at a friend’s house,” Denise said uncertainly. “It’s the high school Naked in School Program. OH! There was a naked girl outside.”
“Yes, Miss Rogers, and you were randomly selected as a participant to start yesterday, but you were absent, leaving us with less than the full quota of required participants. This is a Program violation and means that you will be required to participate beginning now, until Friday next week at 10 pm, because you missed the start. Now I must insist that you remove your clothes,” he said, and the older woman blushed deeply.
“Ah, I see why your lawyers wanted you to have a witness,” Denise said coldly.
Then she collected herself. Thoughts raced through her head, all coalescing in an instant, and she immediately resolved what to do first.
“Center yourself!” she thought. She allowed her body and mind to drop into that “space” she had worked so hard with Kevin to establish when she was learning her meditative “centering” skills for her taekwondo lessons. “Now don’t lose your temper,” she told herself. “And what did Kevin do with Fletcher?” Her mind raced back to when she first met Kevin. “Always negotiate from a position of strength,” was Kevin’s mantra. She would be strong! Kevin had taught her that by projecting a sense of overwhelming confidence, she could get control of this conversation. “Okay, now,” she decided, as only a second or two had passed and Phillips was opening his mouth to speak again, “time to take control here.”
Denise stood up, distracting Phillips, and pointed her finger at him.
“Okay, sir. Here’s my response. First, you should know that that girl I saw outside was freezing! Are you aware how cold it’s been outside the past two days? Forcing the kids into being naked when it’s so cold is irresponsibly abusive! And...” She looked at her watch. “Okay, I have less than an hour before I must leave here for my next class. It’s at UIL, by the way, several tube stops away. Regardless of that, there’s no way that I’ll undress under any circumstances. Now, can you please explain exactly why you expect me to participate in this obscene circus.”
The woman tried to stifle a smile while Phillips had begun to turn red.
“I say! You are rather cheeky, young lady. I don’t have to explain anything. If you don’t undress, then you shall be failed in your classes here,” he admonished her.
“All right, I’ll rephrase the question. Please give me the courtesy of telling me the authority you have to ask me to get undressed,” Denise pressed him as she resumed her seat.
“Well then, I suppose that’s a reasonable question. The uni part of the Naked in School Program—I’ll just call it the ‘Program’—is in a government-required curriculum module; it’s part of the education familiarization training related to the Human Sexuality Promotion Act. All enrollees in courses of study where graduates will be eligible to earn teaching licensure are now required to participate in the uni Program. For the past two years, the Program was run as a pilot in a few schools outside London with greatly mixed results. Research by the Department for Education showed that most of the failures of the Program in the pilot schools were a result of the total lack of training and understanding of the instructional staff. The staff had no idea of the pressures and challenges that the pupils faced in the Program.
“The major recommendation that arose from the government study, which was completed this past spring, was that all future teachers shall be required go through the Program whilst in their teacher training to allow them to understand its effects on the students that they’ll be teaching in their future careers. All of this country’s teachers need to learn how to prepare our pupils who will be participating in the Program. The Program was designed to be a major social growth initiative for pupils but it’s an experience which could potentially be traumatic for the children, and it’ll be each teacher who studies here who’ll be responsible for guiding them in dealing with their experience. Unless you have the experience of the challenges your pupils face, you won’t have the ability to provide this guidance. Do you follow so far?”
Denise looked at him steely-eyed. “I could shoot enough holes through that argument so that it wouldn’t hold a thimbleful of water, sir. You’re saying that some kind of government study commission came up with this recommendation, based on a pilot run in a couple of schools. Okay, is there more?”
“Yes there is,” he went on, “for your part in this requirement. Here are our Program participation rules in brief. You must remain naked at all times, but you are permitted to dress if you go off campus. Your records show that you’re not living in the uni’s residence halls so we’ve made arrangements for a room here for you to stay until next week. The booklet I gave you describes activities called Reasonable Requests, these are requests from others to examine and fondle your body generally speaking but may involve other actions which you must submit to as well. You must permit those Requests or you will not successfully pass your courses here. The sheet inside the booklet gives the times and places you must allow the Requests, but you’ll see that it’s generally anywhere on campus between 9 am and 11 pm every day. You must use male restroom facilities everywhere and male showers in the uni residences and gymnasium.
“You must remain on campus for the weekend and be available in public places outside your residence room for no less than eight hours each day to allow Requests to be made of you, and during the times you are in your residence quarters, your door must remain open until 11 pm each day to allow residents of your hall to have access to you. And your time in the Program will end the following Friday at 10 pm since you didn’t complete the required first day. The booklet provides all of the details of the Program rules. Now I expect you to comply with my request to disrobe.”
Denise gathered her thoughts. “Okay, now I have a few comments I need to make and I’d appreciate not being interrupted, just as I didn’t interrupt you, sir. First, and this isn’t really important to my response to your request, but I’ll just mention it for the background it provides. I’m an American citizen and have experienced the Program in my own high school, so I know that the benefits that are so highly touted are totally nonexistent. Much more important is the fact that I’m not part of your teacher’s training program; I’m not taking classes leading to teacher certification. I have classes in research statistics and childhood psychology, both of which happen to be in the ed school, but these aren’t part of your core teacher-training courses.
“Next is about the mechanics of running the Program here. You said this is idiocy is to prepare teachers for teenagers’ nudity in your secondary schools by requiring your teacher-ed students to spend a week naked on an urban college campus, for God’s sake. This campus is inside a major city and all the streets and walkways are public here. I saw a few older men passing through outside and gawking at that poor naked girl outside. And think of the safety issues your naked girls will face on city streets! All of this... no, sir, please don’t interrupt... ah, there’s no similarity between your ‘naked in college’ and the high school Program—the high school kids are naked in a protected environment, mostly—a closed building not accessible to the public, and have almost continuous supervision, and also dress to go home. They aren’t required to travel home naked, spend the weekend naked, and don’t have to allow people into their bedrooms to fondle them as your program allows. The crackbrained version that you want your teacher trainees to experience has almost no relationship to what the high school students will experience.”
“Young lady...” Phillips began.
“Sorry sir; I’m not done yet. Next comes the issue of my participating. I’m taking pre-med classes at UIL five days a week and I’m due there for class in 40 minutes now. I’m also the guardian of a high-school girl and have home responsibilities to her and my fiancé as well, plus I have responsibilities that I can only take care of on the weekends. Actually, I will be on this campus only once more this week, on Thursday morning, then next Tuesday and Thursday.”
Denise stood up, walked in front of Phillips’ desk, and pointed her finger at him again.
“And finally I need to mention the legal and contractual issues you’re violating. The requirement to participate in non-class teacher-training activities—which are unrelated to my two classes, as I pointed out—was not mentioned in my registration materials nor anywhere else made known to me. I registered with the understanding and confirmed with your college’s advisor that the two courses I enrolled in were my sole responsibility to complete. You’ve just threatened that I won’t pass those classes. I’m also not enrolled for a degree here; my degree will be from Avery University in the U.S., not here. I know I could charge this university with contract violation, but I have a better idea.”
Phillips was sputtering with indignation and his face had turned red. “Young LADY...” he began again.
“Wait!” Denise commanded. “Are you willing to swear out a witnessed statement that you are requiring that I strip myself naked in your office and that if I refuse to do so, you will fail me in the two courses I’m taking? Will you agree to putting such a statement in writing, signing it, and having it witnessed?”
“May I speak now? I’ve never, ever been spoken to by a student in such a manner, Miss Roberts; I find you extremely rude and impertinent. But yes, I’d be willing to put my requirements in writing, if it would persuade you to comply.”
“Good; please do, because I’ll take that statement directly to the nearest police station and charge you with both blackmail and sexual assault.”
“What! I have a witness that I never touched you...”
“You are blackmailing by threatening to withhold something of value—course grades—you are coercing me to perform an act against my will and I’m sure that your courts have decided that forced nudity can be a form of a sexual crime. Courts in the States have; so they probably have here too. And your law creating the Program only mentions the nudity requirement for pupils in high school, from what I was told, so it won’t protect you from my charge of blackmail. Next, assault does not require contact; it’s the promise of causing harm to a victim, and that harm is your threat of forcing me to disrobe. I believe American law is based on British law, so I’m quite familiar with how ‘assault’ is legally defined. I assure you your demand for me to strip constitutes an assault under the law. Do you still want to sign such a statement, sir?”
“Ah... perhaps I should consult with the school’s legal office...” he said weakly, taken aback.
His secretary was now smiling broadly.
“Sir? Just how invested in this whole nudity idea are you? Do you personally believe it’s a good educational idea? Off the record, of course,” Denise prompted.
“Well, officially I have to support any program the government requires, but privately I’m less than thrilled about the notoriety and reception that this initiative has caused. We’ve lost about a third of our new teacher-ed class...” he mused. “They changed majors, apparently.”
“I have a little time left before I really have to run,” Denise remarked. “Here’s what I think about your new government rules. My conversation with your advisor last week makes me virtually certain that the new rules you’re trying to follow have no basis in the existing law. She told me that the government office which inspects schools and curricula only recently notified you about them and that your school was scrambling to comply with them. But I’m certain that the requirement to run the Program in universities is not part of the law that authorized the Naked in School Program or else the university component of teacher training would have been set up several years ago, back when the Program began. Is my interpretation correct?”
Phillips allowed that Denise was correct.
“So I think that the requirement for the Program in teacher-training schools is actually an administrative suggestion. I’m very sure it’s not in the law itself. Another thought about teaching the Program just occurred to me. About 50 to 60 percent of British schools don’t appear to have the Program, from what I noticed when I was registering my ward in her high school last month. So the whole premise of having to train teachers for dealing with an anomaly like guiding high-school kids through a naked week is losing traction very quickly, don’t you think? What I think is I might just do here what I helped do in the States: kill the Program.”
Phillips sat up straight. “Did you say you killed the Program there?”
“Well, I was involved in its demise. One of the primary architects of its dismemberment was actually my fiancé. That’s from whom I learned how to deal with overweening bureaucracy; sorry for being disparaging, but I don’t think very highly of the morons who came up with the idea for the Program. Now I’m done here, but I will expect that you will immediately drop your request that I participate. You must excuse me; I don’t want to be late for my next class.”
Denise left a bewildered university dean and a grinning secretary behind as she dashed out, deactivating her voice recording.
She texted Kevin as she rode the tube to UIL, “NIS dragon loose in teachers college, need white knight to slay dragon at 3:50 union café, can u come?”
Just before she arrived at her classroom, her cell rang; it was Kevin. “Darling, what the hell happened?”
“Ha! They tried to put me in the Program there but I pulled your act—no kung fu stuff though—and talked myself out of it. But I rescued a nude girl from the cold; lent her my jacket, actually, so I’m a little chilled. I’m meeting her at 3:50 and I think you’re free then; can you come and talk with her?”
“Um, sure. I’m what, ten minutes from there, sure. Hey, loved the dragon metaphor, made me think of what Amelia said.”
“Yep, I did too, that’s why I texted that. Wonderful! Hey, gotta go, class is starting. Love ya!”
~~~~
Denise started up the steps to the Union at 3:40 and then saw Kevin running up toward her. They embraced when he reached her.
“Oh, god, Kevin, thanks for coming!”
“Oh, sweetie, you’re trembling...”
“Yeah, delayed reaction. It took hours to hit, but that scene in Fletcher’s office with that Abover goon dragging me in—that keeps popping into my head now. I had a visceral reaction to seeing that poor girl—her name’s Sharon Jones by the way—shivering in the cold and getting gang-groped. And I’m still a little chilly too. Damn, it’s friggin’ cold.”
“So you went to help her. That’s my girl.” He kissed her. “Where’s the café?”
“First floor in back, I think. In the States this would be the second floor. Downstairs is the ‘ground floor.’”
“Yeah, that stuff threw me for a day,” Kevin grinned.
They walked into the café and saw a small group at a table in the corner and immediately knew where Sharon was. About half of the group were naked, but Sharon wasn’t; she was wearing a loose sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants.
“Ohmygod!” Sharon shouted. “Look! She’s here!”
The others turned as Kevin and Denise walked up.
Sharon rushed over to them and grabbed Denise’s hand. “After you ran away, I remembered where I heard your name! At orientation they called your name for the Program... and thank you, thank you! I told the others in the Program, everyone I could find, what you did and to come here now. I hope it’s okay...”
Another girl was looking at Denise. “Wow, you’re Denise Roberts? Right, you were the girl they called for the sodding Program but didn’t show.”
Denise told them she wasn’t at orientation because she wasn’t in the teacher-training course.
“And I had a lo-o-o-ong session with the dean earlier today to discuss that fact but he tried to get me to strip off anyway. To fight him back, I thought of my fiancé Kevin here and drew my moral support from him,” Denise took his hand. “Kevin and I plus a team of other high schoolers—who then became college kids, got the Program shut down in the States.”
There was a chorus of ooohs and aaaahs.
She grinned evilly. “I thought maybe we could bring the American Revolution back here to the British Isles and free you all from the naked tyranny of your government.”
Everyone howled with laughter at that.
“Seriously, maybe we can brainstorm this thing to try to kill it off right here and now. We’ll tell you some of the tactics we used to protect the naked kids and perhaps they will work, but on a whole campus it’s so different from a single building, that some things we did won’t... um... I guess the word is ‘scale.’ This is a much bigger place and there are your dorms involved too, and loads of kids who aren’t gonna be teachers and who’d never ever have to be naked themselves—they would have no mercy on you guys,” she finished. “So let’s sit and we’ll go over some of my ideas first and you can let me know if they sound feasible.”
They agreed that this sounded good.
“Okay, so the first thing I noticed was poor Sharon freezing her butt off,” Denise began.
“Yeah, it was really bad out there this morning!” one of the naked guys said. “Another guy in the Program is sick in his room now; he had to be outdoors a lot yesterday and caught a cold or something.”
The others agreed that they couldn’t stand the cold and even indoors, the rooms were quite drafty and chilly. That’s why a few of them decided to chance getting dressed despite the nudity rule.
“So here’s my first idea. I glanced at the Program booklet the dean gave me and it talks about ‘safety equipment’—the school here is using the high school rules because the government doesn’t have any university rules at all, but that’ll be another anti-Program point—so your safety is the first issue. Let me read what it says: ‘The Program does NOT expect participants to risk their health or safety. Appropriate safety equipment may be worn if required under certain circumstances...’ Got that? Your health. Freezing your ass off—hey, it’s called a ‘bum’ here, right?—freezing bums off is definitely not healthy. So the first anti-Program rule is everyone should go to the student health clinic and get a prescription for... clothing! The ed school authorities can’t nay-say that and I’ll bet the docs would be delighted to require that you mustn’t be naked outdoors or in chilly buildings.”
Everyone was cheering and pounding the tables.
Kevin leaned over to her, whispering, “Good one, darling... sure you really need me?”
She grinned at him and turned back to the group.
“Hell,” Denise continued, “I saw a few years ago, in an international sports mag, a story covering a naked volleyball tournament at a nudist resort and the weather was very chilly, just like now, in fact. When the reporters and photographer arrived to cover the games, the resort organizers were all wearing clothes. The reporter asked why, since it was a nudist event, and the guy answered, ‘We might be nudists but we’re not stupid!’”
Another round of appreciative shouts and table banging ensued.
Denise tried to calm everyone down when a few stragglers came rushing in and joined the group.
“What did we miss?” one girl panted as she joined the others.
“Yeah, I heard that there was an anti-Program thing starting,” a boy chimed in as he came close and a girl coming up behind him called, “Yeah, I heard that too!”
In hushed voices some of the group brought the latecomers up to date; they couldn’t restrain their delighted reactions to what they heard.
“Okay, guys, there’s lots more to cover!” Denise called. “The next thing is, if you’re forced to be naked somehow during Request hours, try to have a friend with you who can set you an innocuous Request task to keep you busy. You can decline a Request if you’re busy doing someone else’s.”
There was another round of cheers at that comment.
“Now let me let an expert give you another one of the anti-Program things we did. Kevin here worked this thing out with a lawyer so we know it’s bulletproof. Kevin, tell them about the word definitions.”
Kevin stood. “Hi, guys. Denise is right, definitions of the terms in the booklet; that’s a great anti-Program weapon. Some of what I’ll tell you now will need you to do some research—you’ll need to check out the law underlying the Program here. It’s very likely, since this Program booklet seems awfully similar to our old Yankee one, that the folks here didn’t really bother to make sure that everything in the Brit version of the Program booklet matches the law that was passed here for the Program. So you might find something in the booklet rules you have to follow that isn’t anywhere in the law. If you find that, then they can’t make you do those things. Maybe the rule forcing you to be naked in your dorms isn’t part of the law, for example.
“Anyway, definitions of the terms in the booklet are important and we found that most of the terms in our Program booklet were not defined anywhere. But the school Program officials in the States told us how they wanted them to be defined. But legally they couldn’t do that since under all law codes, as my attorney friend told me, a term used in a law, or a regulation, or a Program rule must be defined in that regulation or else its definition is what’s found in any ordinary dictionary. They can’t make up their own definitions or even select which definition to use if there’s more than one. Then you’re free to use the definition you choose to suit your own reading of the rule.
“So let’s take the idea about wearing clothes as safety equipment. They probably will tell you that the only ‘appropriate’ safety equipment is listed on that page in your booklet, but ‘appropriate’ isn’t defined anywhere in the Program booklet, so its meaning comes from the dictionary, it’s something like ‘suitable or proper in the circumstances.’ If your ass is freezing off, clothing is quite appropriate, or proper, in those circumstances, for your safety, no?”
Laughter and cheers.
“Then they may try to say that only the few items in the list on that page is what ‘appropriate’ is supposed to mean. They missed two little words: ‘for example.’ Someone with a smart phone tell me how ‘example’ is defined, please.”
After a brief pause, one of the girls called, “A thing characteristic of its kind or illustrating a general rule.”
There was laughter and a number of comments flew.
Kevin went on, “Right. That list in the booklet includes only some possible items of safety equipment and the word ‘example’ means that the list is not an exclusive one. See what I mean by definitions? You can do the same things with the meaning of ‘safety’ and ‘equipment’ and any other word or term you want to bend to your advantage. You can pick apart that entire booklet, use it for a tool to fight them and don’t let them force you into believing it says something that it doesn’t. But I think Denise had one of the best ideas, clothing as safety equipment to protect your health.”
“Thanks, honey,” Denise squeezed his hand. “Now if people demand for you to take off your clothes—if somehow they even know you’re supposed to be in the Program—then just dress in a number of layers and tell them that there’s no time for you to go somewhere warm, undress, do their Request, and dress again. But that won’t help when you’re in a warm place, though, because you’d need to be undressed. So stay away from warm places; it’s only a few days. Find errands off campus. They don’t seem to have people watching you. Make it hard for them. And above all, girls, travel together and never be alone while you’re naked—even with a boy or boys you know...”
“Yeah, that’s true,” one of the girls called, “in one of the pilot schools a Program girl was raped by three boys she knew.”
“Thank you,” Denise acknowledged her. “The final thing I want to mention is that the whole idea of doing this in universities may be a bureaucratic invention and not based on the law itself. I heard there’s an Ofster committee or something...”
“Ofsted!” a few voices called.
“...yeah, government education standards inspectors, right?”
“Yes!”
“...that told the university that they need to do the Naked in School Program at this university to meet secondary school curriculum standards. I’m sure that requirement isn’t in the original law; it’s an interpretation and extension of their responsibilities and they can’t make you give up your privacy rights by government fiat. This is how you can kill off this bloody Program. Did I use ‘bloody’ properly?” Denise asked.
“YES!”
She went on, “So now the ball’s in your—oops, my bad...” Guffaws from the group. “Um. The next steps are in your hands and I think by the end of this week or next, if you spread the word, this whole idea will disappear.”
There was a burst of applause and the group surrounded Denise, thanking her; Kevin stood back with a proud smile, watching her.
As the group began to disperse, Sharon came up to Denise and shyly handed back her jacket, then hugged her fiercely.
“That was brilliant! I can’t thank you enough!” she cried. “It was so awful. I hid the first day and didn’t eat either—I was too scared to go to the dining hall. My roommate brought me a few things to eat. And the guys wouldn’t stop pawing my body...” A tear started to roll down her cheek.
Denise comforted her. “It’s gonna be okay now, Sharon. You can help by arming yourself by knowing the rules. I heard that you need to write a journal—just put down your ordinary activities as you do them but don’t say anything that implies that you weren’t naked. I’m sure this whole thing will be over fairly soon.”
~~~~
When Denise and Kevin were on the train home, Denise leaned into Kevin. She was still trembling a bit, a delayed reaction after her performance with the students.
Kevin said reassuringly, stroking her back, “Damn, Denise, you were friggin’ awesome there, you know? That was an amazing performance.”
“God. I’m so glad it’s over. I hope I never see another naked person again...”
“Um. Does that mean you’re moving out of our bedroom? I sure hope not...” Kevin moaned.
“You dummy!” She punched his arm. “You know what I meant!”
“Just checking,” he murmured as they kissed.
Later that evening Denise played the recording of her meeting with Phillips.
“Shit, honey,” Kevin breathed, looking at her admiringly. “You did some job on him.”
“I had the world’s expert in persuasion techniques show me how to do it, sweetie,” she responded. “You always told me that you negotiate from a position of strength. So I thought of all the things you used against Fletcher and the others and didn’t give Phillips an opening.”
“Bet he never knew what hit him,” Kevin mused and wrapped her in an embrace.
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