Letter to the Editor: Corrections to Last Week’s Senate Beat

Last week’s Senate Beat discussed an interaction that took place at Senate Public regarding college policies on nudity at student performances. Unfortunately, Senate Beat misrepresented this discussion on several levels: it misconstrued the basis of the discussion; it had factual inaccuracies in describing the discussion itself; and it overrepresented the positions of April Sams (Director of Risk Management and EHS) and Janice Yang (Director of OSE), while leaving out important comments and context stated by Senate and the Weapons of Mass Distraction (WMD) signators.

Senate Beat characterized the discussion as being centered around a future nude event that WMD plans to hold. This is not true. We were following up on an incident from last semester, when WMD planned to have partial nudity in our Spring/Fall show. WMD has historically had partial nudity in a number of our shows and has never been aware that this is a problem. In the case of Spring/Fall, we noted in our event registration that there would be nudity, with the intention of making sure that people who did not want to see nudity could avoid it. We were then informed by the Office of Student Engagement that per college risk management policy, nudity was not allowed in public, organized performances. We brought this information to Senate as we believe the “guideline” described is in violation of the Community Constitution, an established agreement for everyone at Reed. 

At Senate Public, our focus was not on a potential future event but rather on challenging the guidelines sent to us before this past event. We also hoped to center the conversation around guidelines for any student group that hopes to have a performance including nudity, not just ours.

The article described the discussion as “revolving around potential legal issues that may arise from continuing to allow nudity at campus events.” However, nudity is not currently allowed at campus events; the discussion was about what it would take for nudity to be allowed at all. Furthermore, the discussion was not about a “fully nude event” but rather partial nudity at performances. Sams stated multiple times that the college was not trying to “ban nudity,” a distinction which the article also fails to mention.

The article states, “In response to a possible compromise in which WMD performers could cover up with ‘swimwear’-style clothing, Feinberg asked by what metrics risk management would deem a particular item or style ‘swimwear.’” This did not happen. We quoted the line from Sams’ original email that required performers to be covered at a level equivalent to standard swimwear, but it was never framed as a “compromise” and I did not ask a question in that way.

The article described one of the legal codes Sams quoted to justify the risk management guidelines (Portland city code 14A.40.030, regarding public indecency). She also referenced Oregon code 167.075, which states that it is illegal to exhibit an obscene performance to a minor. It did not note that Senators and WMD signators questioned whether either law applies in this case, as Reed’s campus is arguably private property and the code about obscene performances appears to only apply if the performers are being paid.

The article described the amphitheater as being “right next to the bridge that many underclassmen cross to return to their dorms at the end of the day.” I’m not sure where this came from, as no one referenced this in any sense during the Public discussion. The inclusion of this statement when no one present brought it up reads as biased and certainly overemphasizes a concern that was not present.

The article also failed to mention concerns raised by WMD signators and Senators that the guidelines being described were in violation of the Community Constitution, which states that community-wide legislation must be approved by Senate or student referendum (III.4.A) and published on the Reed website (III.5) and that performances shall not be subject to institutional censorship (VII.1).

WMD signators and Senators will be meeting with Risk Management and OSE to continue this conversation, and future updates will be in the Quest, hopefully more accurately.

-Maggie Feinberg ’28, on behalf of the WMD signators