College Nudity Revealed

Two goals College Nudity has set are to encourage stronger female participation and to recruit more college students. These two groups seem to me elusive to naturism in general, so improvements here will not be easy or swift, but we do have a plan to address them rather than ignore them.

As with many naturist organizations, our male members outnumber female members 70 percent to 30 percent. This does not adversely affect our main objective, but to keep our ranks truly coed, a 60:40 long-range ratio certainly seems attainable. We plan to establish greater visibility of our female members not only at our activities but in College Nudity administration as well. Perhaps with this increased visibility, the female members will not feel so outnumbered or left out of the loop.

On the other hand, we can't go overboard lest people get the wrong impression. College Nudity is not a dating club and our events are not "gawkfests." If someone is interested in that, we suggest they go elsewhere. We do not tolerate inappropriate behavior (though we have never had a problem thus far). On the college campus beat, we have been able to sign members from the numerous colleges and universities in the Boston area. We even fostered the formation of an unofficial student naturist group on the Boston University campus. By educating the public about naturism, perhaps we can slowly change negative perceptions.

The Gen-X crowd tends to be a fickle one; one week it's naturism, the next week it's bicycling. that's why we must be happy with low attendance at many events. At the end of last season, we had 50 odd members, but maybe a dozen actively participating members, which is a shame because the "no shows" are really missing out on some memorable events. For example, our small but enthusiastic troupe at the 1995 Eastern Naturist gathering was one of the last to depart, we were having such a good time.

Although College Nudity has been actively pursuing enthusiasts on the college campuses, the reality is that most students go home during the summer, which in most cases is not in the Boston area. Since most of our activities take place June-September, this counts many students out. So we don't rely solely on college students as our main source of members, though we do count on them to augment our ranks. The more students we get to attend the indoor activities, the more people will go away with a better knowledge and positive image of nude recreation. maybe when they get back home, they will become active in the naturist groups in their areas, which will surely benefit us all.