Because an essential part of a college education is walking around naked or something.

Alec Torres of National Review reports.

Nude Week at Brown

About 30 naked people, an even mix of males and females, lay on the floor in a darkened, closed-off room, on soft, padded mats covered with towels for purposes of hygiene. When they took off their clothes, a small bit of laughter spread throughout the room. They stood in lines, bending over and stretching, completely in the nude, as an instructor led them through basic yoga poses such as Mountain or Downward Dog, wherein one stands on all fours, pelvis pushed up toward the ceiling.

This is not at a commune or colony. No, this is an event at Brown University, part of a weeklong series on nudity.

“Nudity in the Upspace,” as the series is titled, is a workshop devoted to confronting stigmas about the naked body. Now in its second year, it aims to provide an open forum to discuss nudity and “explore nudity in all forms” — one’s own and that of other people. The students who dreamed up the nude sessions submitted their proposal to the “Upspace Lottery” (the Upspace being a room in T. F. Green Hall where the event took place) held by Brown’s Production Workshop, a student-run theatre. The Student Activities Office, an arm of the university, gave the thumbs-up for the forum.

The yoga session, held the evening of October 1, was led by Brown senior Dulma Tara, who promised — according to the event description online — to “stretch your body, perhaps in ways that it hasn’t been stretched before!” Other events in the week included nude body painting, nude theatre, and a nude cabaret and open-mic night in which “various performers will sing, dance, act, or do anything they desire to do in the nude in front of an audience.” (Viewers were alerted that they could choose to be clothed or naked, as they wished.)