Administrators have done everything they can to show they're serious about enforcing the ban on the Naked Quad Run (NQR). Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman yesterday sent out an email to the student body — and, to our chagrin, parents and guardians — informing them that anyone who attempted to run NQR in violation of the ban would face a one−semester suspension from the university.
If the university is set on wiping out NQR once and for all, the threat of a one−semester suspension is all the deterrent it needs. The poorly articulated list of NQR−related offenses that falls under the overly broad purview of the student Code of Conduct's new amendment is unnecessary. In its effort to close all the loopholes, the Committee on Student Life (CSL) wrote a policy that is both too vague and too broad, and which could open the door to excessive punishments for offenses that have little to do with students' participation in NQR.
Any student "who claims to have run in defiance of the ban" is now subject to a one−semester suspension. What exactly would constitute such a claim? Does that include Facebook statuses and Tweets? If a student is overheard in the dining hall bragging that he stripped off his clothes and surreptitiously sprinted around the campus, shall we assume he won't be returning for the spring semester? Given the severity of the punishment, the CSL should at least be clear about what sort of "claims" can land students in trouble.
There's also something about prosecuting students for rules they claim to have broken that seems rather Orwellian. The university doesn't discipline students who claim to have smoked marijuana or ticket students who claim they parked in a faculty parking space. That would be ridiculous. So is this.
By creating a rule against even talking about running NQR, it seems like administrators are determined not only to put an end to the event, but also to prevent discussion of the event. That's the only logical reason for punishing students' claims about having run NQR, because if the administrators didn't already have evidence that such claims had a basis in reality, then presumably there would be no need for them to take action because no damage occurred.
Tufts should refrain from policing student speech. It's demeaning, it's antithetical to the university's alleged commitment to free expression, and it's pointless, since the threat of a one−semester suspension is almost certainly enough to prevent NQR from continuing.
The policy also states that "public intoxication" will also qualify as defiance of the ban and is punishable by a one−semester suspension. Public intoxication happens every weekend of the semester. Are we to believe, then, that any student who is cited for public intoxication can now technically be suspended from the university? Or does the rule only refer to mass public intoxication that occurs on the last night of fall semester classes? The policy doesn't make any distinction.
Likewise, the policy prohibits anyone from attempting to "organize an activity in defiance of the ban." But what activities exactly qualify as "defiance" is never spelled out. Would the planned "Excessively Overdressed Quad Stroll" (EOQE) be construed as "defiance" on the part of the students? Or are only "activities" that involve nudity or semi−nudity punishable under the ban? What if some of the students participating in the EOQE are publicly intoxicated? Is drunkenly stumbling around the Res Quad in a tuxedo is sufficiently disruptive that it now merits suspension from the university?
Some might argue that these questions are ludicrous, that we should be able to intuit what activities the CSL means when it refers to "defiance of the ban." But that isn't good enough, not when the activities in question can have such serious consequences.
The one−semester suspension for running NQR is enough to seal its fate. NQR is finished. The rest of the policy is a pile−on and a poorly written one at that.
