Required Nudity in College Art Class Causes Uproar
I’m not sure why any student would enroll in this class if they know nudity will be required. It still seems a little weird, though.
Jennifer Kabbany reports at the College Fix.
REPORT: Professor requires students be naked in visual arts final exam or fail it
A University of California San Diego visual arts class requires students to perform naked as part of its final exam, a mandate that has one mother of a female student in the class furious, ABC KGTV-News reports.
The class, “Performing for the Self,” is made up of a series of “gestures,” and the final gesture – called “Erotic Self” – consists of the students and their male professor getting naked in a room lit only by candlelight, ABC News reported – adding that students have to be nude to pass the final.
The professor, Ricardo Dominguez, told the news outlet that the exam is “all very controlled,” and added students know what is expected, that if they are uncomfortable with the final “gesture” they should not take the class.
The mother, who asked to remain anonymous, told ABC she is outraged by the assignment. “There is a perversion going on here,” she said. “Shame on him and shame on the university.”
“It bothers me. I’m not sending her to school for this,” added the mother, who sounds like she was holding back tears. “How terrible. This sucks. This is just wrong. And to blanketly say, ‘You must be naked in order to pass my class,’ it makes me sick to my stomach.’”
But the professor alleges he’s taught the class that way for 11 years with no complaints.
After news of this final exam spread, school officials apparently released statements to concerned San Diego residents who emailed the school that walk back the professor’s own admission in a telephone interview to the news agency that it’s a requirement:
“The options are clarified in the class. Students learn that they can do the gesture in any number of ways without actually having to remove their clothes. There are many ways to perform nudity or nakedness, summoning art history conventions of the nude or laying bare of one’s ‘traumatic’ or most fragile and vulnerable self. One can ‘be’ nude while being covered.”
REPORT: Professor requires students be naked in visual arts final exam or fail it (The College Fix)
Comments
Someone in charge there (assuming ANYONE in charge is an adult) how any of this squares not only with the Microaggression stuff but with the sexual assault prevention stuff all over all our campuses. Seriously, no one has ever complained before? Are ALL our kids braindead?? Does no one know right from wrong anymore?? (Silly questions considering it’s Academentia, but I can’t help myself.)
Someone in charge there *has to explain” how… Yep, preview is my friend and I should always use it.
Hello. I am here and reading.
How to keep students from bringing notes in to the final exam…
I would have attended the final dressed in a burqa and dared the idiot to fail me.