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The actions of two University of Maine students may cause lawmakers to reexamine a state statute.
In November Kathryn Mann and Debra Ballou decided it would be fun to streak around their neighborhood and ended up on Main Street in Orono. Town police officers saw the women and arrested them. Both planned to plead guilty to indecent conduct charges in 3rd District Court. That was until Judge Ronald Russell questioned whether a naked woman walking or running down a street was breaking the law at all, the Bangor Daily News reported.
The Maine indecent conduct law prohibits anyone from “knowingly exposing [his or her] genitals [in public] under circumstances that, in fact, are likely to cause affront or alarm.”
While the law makes it clear that men cannot run around naked, Russell questioned if it is possible to see a woman’s genitalia if she is running down the street without clothes on, the News reported.
On Wednesday, Jan. 30, Mann and Ballou will be back in court pleading not guilty and hoping that their trial judge will base his or her decision on the actual wording of the law, not an interpretation that would work against them.
“Now the court system is freaked out,” Ballou, a 20-year-old horticultural science major said recently. “They should change [the statute] if they don’t like the way it’s worded. I don’t think we should pay the price for their mistake. They don’t have the right to interpret the law. Legally and biologically we did not expose ourselves.”
If they are found not guilty, it may lead to some reworking of the statute.
“I think the Maine legislature will next year give a lot of consideration to this and come up with a definition that is more precise,” Ted Curtis, an attorney who provides legal guidance to UMaine students, said.
Orono Police Chief Albert Dravidzius said he does not believe legislators wrote the law to exclude women or to make it gender specific and said it would cause him some concern if the statute means females can walk around the town without wearing clothes.
“I thought the legislative intent was to prohibit indecent conduct – nudity in public,” Dravidzius said Wednesday. “I think the judge’s interpretation of that was much more narrower. I would not want to be out with kids and family and find out the booth next to me is occupied by people who are all nude.”
Mann and Ballou admitted they had been drinking the night they were arrested.
“Obviously our judgment was impaired,” Mann, a fourth year zoology major said. “We probably would have stayed in our neighborhood more if we were sober.”
Mann said they have both streaked before when they were sober and said they didn’t really do it for a specific cause.
“Our intent was not to protest,” Mann said. “We were out having fun. It was liberating.”
Neither thinks there is anything wrong with being nude and thinks it is ridiculous that you cannot be naked in public.
“What’s so offensive about a woman’s body?” Ballou said. “Clothes were invented to keep people warm and if you’re not cold, you shouldn’t have to wear them. I think people should be able to be naked [in public]. It should be a right.”
Mann agrees.
“We have been stripped of our right to naked skin,” she said.
Mann and Ballou said that they would not pursue the issue any further, regardless of the outcome of Wednesday’s trial.
“At least we were a catalyst in getting people thinking about it,” Ballou said.
“If I’m guilty I’ll pay the fine, but I’ll have less respect for the court,” Mann said.
Indecent conduct, which is classified as a Class E crime in Maine, has a maximum fine of $1,000.
