Every year a bunch of kids at Tufts get drunk and run around naked on the last day of classes; we call it NQR. This year, a reporter (obviously without any exciting Monday night plans) from a local paper¹ got the bright idea to head up to campus with a video camera and a dream to shoot everyone running by, then to put together a hard-hitting piece on life at a prestigious school attended mostly by affluent suburban white kids².

The story is here and the video is here.

This is where it gets good: basically everyone is outraged about this. My fellow Tufts students are appalled that their naked bums are online for all to see (”it’s creepy!”), parents are embarrassed that $41,000+ per year pays for, among other things, euphemistic funding for the event, and local residents are just plain pissed off after 152 years of living next to college students. Go figure.

Like all outrageous things ³ these days, there’s a Facebook protest group, called NQR 2007: a Tufts Tradition, NOT a Media Sensation (Facebook account needed to view the link) and featuring a charming photo of naked people with the colors (dramatically) inverted and lots of capital letters superimposed.

Something immediately got under my skin about this whole blow-up, and I took it out by getting saucy with the Facebook group. Here’s what I wrote to the members on the group’s “Wall,”

HI, I CAN CANCEL PLEASE TEH VIDEO?!1!?! I NAKED BUT NOT EXPECT PPL TO SEE ME. PLZ, YOU VIOLATE MY RITES. NO VIDEO. KTHX.

And,

Good thing I didn’t waste any outrage on Darfur, because THIS IS UNCONSCIONABLE. It is COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED that someone used an electronic device to capture hundreds of naked college students and put it on the internet. DO WE HAVE A RALLY COMMITTEE YET?????

Saucy indeed. It was late and I get hyperbolic. I’ve had more conversations recently than I’d ever hoped to about those thousand naked kids, and my thoughts have cohered. Since I know you won’t be able to sleep until you get my take on the matter, here it is:

There’s two elements to this for me: one frustratingly normal, the other universal but insidious for that fact.

The first is everyday classism. You people (working class “Townies”) don’t have a right to come do this to Us people (bitter Ivy also-rans). It’s like a bunch of eighteen year olds are just finding out that Mom and Dad aren’t going to be able to make everything okay anymore, and that’s a hard pill to swallow.

A comment by “Just Thinking…” does a pretty good job of coming right out with some of the latent aspects of student sentiment on the article’s massive comment thread:

I was just thinking about how many students have one, if not more than one, lawyer in the family who wouldn’t do anything to protect their relative. I myself have two, my mother and father. So, I guess, be on the look-out for those “phone calls” and “e-mails”

Students really cant complain about residents coming and watching. its a spectacle. But the pictures and videos are ruining a tradition. Tufts students aren’t taking pictures of the unkempt yards and houses in somerville, showing your bosses how you cant maintain your personal property, demonstrating lack of responsibility and commitment….OUCH, not a great attribute for any working person.

Respect Tufts University. They do a lot for your community. If you dont think so, please visit www.nspnet.org and look up the somerville office. They have some really interesting stats that I think all residents should appreciate.

There needs to be respect between the community and the school. If the community doesnt respect the school, then it makes 5000 enemies really quickly.

Yowza! “Don’t you appreciate what we do for you people?! My Mother and Father taught me that poor people should stop wallowing on welfare and get off their asses, mow their lawns, and find a job! So pick up those beer cans I left in your yard on Friday and don’t mess with us!” That kid would make even Daniel Patrick Moynihan blush, and he’s hardly alone on the thread.

We’re winning hearts and minds here.

What’s really compelling to me about this discussion, however, is the myopic effect of passion. The thing is, it’s highly plausible that this reporter really did have the legal right to film the event. She’s standing on Tufts property to do it (which might make it illegal) but claims to received an okay from the Police (which would make it legal). For the sake of argument, I’m going to say that even if she were ten feet over and in the street (public property and 100% legal to film whatever you want), the tone of the discussion would be exactly the same.

Rather than actually Google anything about the relevant laws (or - gasp - just swallow their pride and move on), a majority of the commenters who are “victims” of this gross invasion of privacy just make shit up, padding it with legal-sounding terms and a sense of imperative, as does “Participant #2:”

You obviously did not get the permission of the two girls in the pictures above. I can recognize the two girls from these pictures. You have to either censor it using photoshop or just take it down ASAP. If you are going to film anyone naked without their written permission, and then distribute it for your profit or that of the Somerville Journal (since you are putting it on a website that does contain advertisement), I can guarantee you that it’s not legal.

Of course, s/he can’t guarantee that at all (because it’s completely false), but on the internet - and the internet is a big part of where this story has gone - no one can see you lie. So people make claims they can’t substantiate, threats of legal action, and more.

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine Harry Reid appearing in the bedrooms of each of these commenters to say,

Look, it turns out that it was legal for her to be there and film you - crazy, I know, son, but it’s true. Thing is, I’ve got the votes to pass an amendment to the Constitution that would make it illegal for something like this to happen, and even if she’s on public property, she can’t film your event. Do you want me to go ahead with this and reign in that pesky 1st Amendment so that this kind of thing can’t happen to ya’ again?”

What do they do? To my mind, almost all of them take the offer, make it illegal, have the video taken down, and the reporter run out of town.

Because when people are riled up about something - especially what they take to be a moral wrong - they’ll do anything to see it righted, and put on blinders as to the means to their ends. In this instance, it’s the freedom of the press that is causing great indignity to a largely liberal group of students.

It’s the same technique, however, that the far right uses to attempt banning gay marriage, and that the White House has succeeded in using to do great violence to the Bill of Rights. Interestingly, it’s also how any number of totalitarian regimes have come to power and how great numbers of people have been made to do unthinkable things: you arouse the passions and critical thinking is left to the dogs. The ends trump the means. Take the video down!

I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, but I think it’s something essential about man’s fallibility that is shared by “Just Thinking…,” Jerry Falwell, and all sorts of infamous men. If it’s in any of them, it’s in us, too.

Footnotes

1. Which is owned, like so many others, by a national conglomerate. Although, you’ve got to give them props for licensing all of their content under Creative Commons. Way to go.
2. Disclosure: I am an affluent suburban white kid. I did not run naked (this year).
3. Exhibits A & B.
Tags: boston, college, naked quad run, News, nqr, somervillejournal, University