by Sara Russo

Andrez Guerrero and Binh Au, both freshmen at UC-Berkeley, were threatened with arrest on Thursday, April 12th after they set out on a naked stroll through their city as their final project for a women's studies class.

The short-lived experiment lasted only ten minutes before the students were approached by UCPD Sergeant Brenda Flores who threatened to arrest them unless they promptly dressed themselves.

"Get your clothes back on right now," the officer ordered the students. "What is the big idea? I know that sometimes things go on here that are not exactly normal, but you can't go around naked."

The students explained that their experiment in nudity was part of a final group project for a women's studies De-Cal class, but Flores responded that she would contact their instructors.

According to Guerrero and Au, the course for which they had undertook the experiment was devoted to the study of male sexuality. Their choice of project was meant to explore how comfortable the two freshmen were with their own sexuality and to capture how others would respond to the site of them walking around the city nude.

"It's a really open final project where it is okay to be naked," Guerrero explained.

Guerrero and Au had considered other projects along the same theme including buying a slice of pizza while naked and undressing in an elevator and thus "making people deal with our nakedness," but ultimately rejected these in favor of the nude stroll.

Matt Van Bennschoten, a third student taking the course, remained fully dressed while following his classmates around the city with a video recorder to capture bystanders' reactions. According to those present, reactions to the nude display were generally positive, with some observers even snapping pictures of the duo.

When told of the troubles his students had experienced with the law, class instructor Morgan Bombscroodle disagreed with the officer's reaction to the nude experiment. "This is hootenanny," he claimed. "I see a naked parade at least once a year."

The class on male sexuality was made possible through a special program at Berkeley known as De-Cal, which stands for "democratic education at Cal." Instead of merely choosing their courses from the catalogue published by the university, students who make use of the De-Cal program are able to devise their own class syllabus and receive credit for it, or can take a course designed by another student, as long as they can find a faculty sponsor willing to sign off on their proposed curricula.

De-Cal courses taught at Berkeley this spring include "Analyzing Hemp," "The Brahma Bull: An Analysis of Professional Wrestling," "The Erotic as Power," and "The Significance of Tupac Shakur on Our Generation."

A caption on Berkeley's official De-Cal website proudly describes the program as, "Twenty years of progressive education based upon participation, open dialogue, and critical thinking."

But critics of the concept of "democratic education" charge that such courses do not belong in a serious academic institution and argue that taxpayers should not be forced to pay for classes that many consider to be lacking in academic merit.

"In my opinion, for what it's worth, this is just an example of somebody who really doesn't care whether the students learn anything or not," California State Senator Ray Haynes commented to Campus Report about the "democratic education" program at Berkeley. "It's easier for them to abdicate to the students than it is for them to exercise a degree of adult leadership. Heck, I mean if I could have gotten away with that kind of stuff in college I'd have done it, but it would have been bad for me."