BY LINDA HOU

In print | Published April 15, 2010 — Updated April 18, 2010 13:06

For many years, rugby players from the men’s and women’s teams have run naked through the first floor of Parrish Hall at the biannual fundraiser called “The Dash for Cash.”

At separate intervals, members of the women’s and men’s teams would run naked across the first floor of Parrish as onlookers held out money to support the teams. Dash for Cash was held once in the fall and once during Family Weekend.

Yet this year, Family Weekend passed without any public nudity, and the only hint of Dash for Cash was an unrelated event of the same name in the Mr. Swarthmore competition, where the participants were fully clothed.

The indefinite cancellation of Dash for Cash came out of the deans’ disapproval of public nudity, said Myrt Westphal, associate dean for student life.

“We just want the whole campus to know that being naked in public is like underage drinking. It’s against the law, and you can get in trouble,” Westphal said. “You can be put on a sex offenders list and some terrible things can happen.”

Westphal said the decision for the cancellation and a ban on alcohol for three semesters for all rugby events arose after members of the men’s rugby team went streaking around campus after a banquet last fall.

“They just had a wild and crazy night after their banquet, and they just really disrupted the library and the dorms. And there were concerns about how they disturbed people’s sense of safety,” Westphal said.

Even though Dash for Cash was not what precipitated the troubles, Acting Dean of Students Garikai Campbell ’90 said that allowing it to happen makes students think that nudity is allowed in other instances.

“There’s … a certain amount of confusion that comes from being clear about what is appropriate with respect to nudity by having an event that could feel very supportive,” Campbell said. “Because being nude in the dorm spaces, in public, is problematic to the community in a variety of ways, we wanted to be very clear about these behaviors. One way was to encourage something other than Dash for Cash.”

The captain and all contacted members of the men’s rugby team declined to comment. All contacted members and a captain of the women’s team declined to be interviewed, but a women’s rugby team officer replied with a statement from the team in an e-mail.

The email said that Dash for Cash was different from streaking since it is based on trust, not surprise. The e-mail said that the women’s team was disappointed that it was not involved in conversations regarding the event’s cancellation and were not informed of the cancellation until the team asked the deans.

“For the women’s rugby team, Dash for Cash was always a celebration of that trust. It was a bi-annual reminder that we live in a community where we can feel safe appearing naked in public, and where our fellow members of the community could feel comfortable showing up for this event,” the e-mail said.

While the e-mail said that the loss of trust within the college community has made it necessary for Dash for Cash to end, it also noted that the team will have to find other ways to raise money. Since the women’s rugby team is a club team, it does not receive the same money that a varsity team does.

“For Dash for Cash to be successful, it must be an event that the entire community would like to sustain, whether or not they choose to dash themselves or even to attend. The women’s rugby team acknowledges that the time has come for Dash for Cash to end,” the e-mail said.

Although it was only the men’s team who caused the disruptions last semester, Westphal said that because drinking and nudity can sometimes be part of the rugby culture, the bans on alcohol were put into place for both the men’s and the women’s rugby teams.

Assistant Dean and Gender Education Advisor Karen Henry ’87 said that public nudity on campus is especially offensive for survivors of sexual assault on campus.

“Anytime we have an event such as a Dash for Cash or other instances in dorms where there have been naked people, there’s always been a concern for survivors on campus who feel really unsafe,” Henry said.

Ally Grein ’10, a facilitator for Swat Survivors and a former rugby team member, said that while Dash for Cash is not as scary for survivors because they are forewarned, unplanned streaking could be especially frightening for survivors.

“As a facilitator of Swat Survivors, I’ve had numerous occasions of people complaining about the rugby team and their nudity in their drunken debauchery,” Grein said. “I know they don’t mean to make people scared but the result is that they scare people and put people in a lot of pain.”

Grein said that seeing people in the nude can be traumatizing for survivors, and unplanned streaking, especially common amongst the men’s rugby team, is even worse since it is unavoidable.

“The men’s rugby team, in recent years, has had a history of getting naked, streaking on the halls of dorms, jingling door knobs and occasionally vandalizing hallways,” Grein said.

“That really just creates an unsafe environment and it’s hard because you live in the dorm, and they go all across the campus, and you don’t know when they’re coming into your dorm.”

Campbell, however, said that the problem was not simply with the rugby team or any other groups on campus.

“This is a community-wide reporting that we’ve gotten [about streaking]. It’s problematic in a space where you ought to feel safe and comfortable,” Campbell said.

Campbell also said the discouragement of Dash for Cash by the deans rose more from a concern for the safety of students, especially with the discovery of an off-campus man taking pictures of Dash for Cash last semester.

“Last year was the first time I heard of a person on campus, a man that no one knew, taking pictures,” Campbell said. “We owe it to our students to protect them that way … from some outside person doing we don’t know what with those pictures.”

When asked why Dash for Cash has been allowed to happen for so long and is only now being ended, Campbell said that Dash for Cash has been a long tradition, and there was never a reason to end it before.

“It has a long tradition of existing before any of us here,” Campbell said. “Like many traditions, there periodically needs to be looking back.”

Westphal also said that the deans expect students to act as adults and will punish them only when problems rise.

“We can’t deal with everything all the time, so you kind of have to pick and choose your battles,” Westphal said. “We’re not a police state, we can’t get around and poke our noses in everything.”

Campbell and Henry said that the deans hope to have more conversations with the campus.

According to Westphal, Henry and Assistant Dean and Director of the Intercultural Center Rafael Zapata will also speak with the rugby teams to explain to them why streaking can be offensive.

“It’s not ‘speaking out against nudity’ as much as we want to encourage some conversations with the community, [with] us having some input in that conversation,” Campbell said. “Right now, I’m going to be looking to Dean Henry to construct some of those conversations next semester.”

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