UC campuses are open to the public, so just being expelled didn’t mean he couldn’t enter the area. Though I would have thought that they’d have slapped an injunction on him forbidding his nonclothed entry.
As so many have said, it is a sad story. Not only because of his evident mental issues, but because he seemed to me to represent the last stand of 1960s style lassitude. Honestly, my first reaction to what he was doing was “Cool! Just like in Cap d’Agde.”* I mean, he was walking around the campus** like that, going to classes, and some level of toleration or condonement had been established.
Being naked outdoors is a sensual rush – note that I said sensual, not necessarily sexual–and this is what attracts people to a nudist lifestyle, or at least occasional nude recreation on a part time basis. IMHO inappropriate nudity is a direct result of the paucity of places where nudity is tolerated. If there were more places where it was sanctioned, then he probably wouldn’t have done it.
*Cap d’Agde–the famous “naked town” on the Riviera
** Brrr! Doesn’t Berkeley get cold? The guy must have had balls of iron.
Fuckin’ A!
Sounds like he was a thoroughly decent person. That’s not meant as a bad pun, I’m just not sure there’s a better way to describe him. What a shame.
Well actually, you diagnosed (or opined, if you prefer) his Berkeley nudity was possibly an early manifestation of his illness and went on to say he should have gotten psychological treatment for his nudity.
Except of course for the part where you said that if he’d been treated for a psychological disturbance instead of being encouraged to be naked he might still be alive.
Um, because they serve as a counterpoint to your nudity may be sign of mental illness line of thought?
Very sad story indeed. I, too, am not qualified to diagnose him, but while the question of how much his “mental illness” contributed to his nudity is valid, it sure seems to me that the question of how much society’s objection to his nudity contributed to his “mental illness” is, also.
(Yes, yes, I know, putting quotes around “mental illness” sounds like I’M diagnosing him (which I don’t intend to)…but given the fact that the doctors never figured out what was wrong with him, it sure seems possible that he was just misunderstood. The symptoms of his “illness” seem to mostly be nudity (which IMO can be a hyper-rational decision, rather than a pathological one) and the incident of the fight might be a rational response to someone giving him crap over the nudity…
Okay, let me try this again…
If his so-called “mental illness” was never diagnosed, and rather seems assumed because of his recorded behavior, then is it possible that it was not an illness on his part at all, but rather an artifact of society’s perspective being imposed on him? In other words, who was really the mentally ill one here, him or everybody else?
That’s a question that bears looking at, IMO.
[sub]This may not make any sense, but I can’t currently figure out how to state it clearer, so posting ensues.[/sub]
Once the initial furore died down, his nudity wasn’t really that big a deal. Students and even administration tolerated it. If I recall correctly, it was his drug advocacy on top of the nudity that got him expelled (i.e., using his national fame as a platform for advocating drug use in the residence halls, and practicing what he preached). I admired him for the rational stance on nudity, but I remember being disappointed that he became such a stereotypical Berkeley type so quickly.
How much stricter things got since the time I was at UC San Diego, when trilobites ruled the earth. There was so much illicit drug use–mostly pot–that you would have felt comfortable offering the security guard a toke as he passed through on his nightly rounds.