Chapter 15: A Naked in School Program?

The parents’ meeting the following evening began as an unruly affair. Many parents were worked up about the recent SiF news: first, the exposé in the Tallahassee newspaper, which had been picked up by all the remaining newspapers in the state; second, news of a scandal in the state government which had just broken, involving payoffs to elected legislature members to ensure that the SiF program would be implemented despite its costs; and third, rumors about the SiF chip deactivation incident in the high school the day before.

Principal Barello tried to restore order as questions were shouted at her.

“Please! Please settle down. I’ll answer your questions but let’s do this ... orderly. I’ll tell you what we know about yesterday’s incident, then answer questions about it. After that, I’ll talk about the subject for this informational meeting.”

After everyone got settled, she began.

“What happened yesterday is a mystery to the whole staff and faculty here. We carefully reviewed everyone’s recollections and the most coherent story we can assemble is that Mr Bill Jones, our technology teacher, had a note on his calendar from a few days ago about a state survey in some high schools, to be conducted by computer, about how kids in the SiF program were adapting to being always naked. He didn’t recall when he entered that in his schedule and has no idea where he got the request to set that survey up. We found out today that there was no such survey. He reserved time on our Media Center’s computers and his calendar note said that Mrs Leonard, our assistant principal, would send the selected students to complete the survey. That was our earliest written record of the event, from four days ago.

“Then Mrs Leonard noticed that the office secretary had copies of instructions and lists of the students, by grade, who had been selected to participate in the survey. The secretary told me that she had assumed that the lists came from Mrs Leonard, but Mrs Leonard said she had no knowledge of any such lists and that it appeared to her that Mr Jones had provided the lists; however, he denied having any knowledge of the names of any students enrolled in the SiF program and there’s no reason that he would even have any such names—and even stranger, there was no way for him to get the names, without Mrs Leonard knowing about it.

“But somehow, every single name on the four lists that the secretary had was a SiF child. The school doesn’t even keep a separate list of students in SiF; a notation about their school dress code exemption only appears in their individual personal records. Those student records are quite secure; Mrs Leonard did not prepare those lists, so how those student names came to be on the lists is baffling to us. The only possible way is that the county SiF office sent the lists to the school, but they deny doing that. They claim that they don’t have children’s names associated with any school.

“That’s just the first mystery. The second is what happened to inactivate the chips. There seems to be a cell phone app involved, but the technicians who looked at that app said that it was not remotely possible that that particular app could inactivate RFID chips. There was a website involved too, but that was a document cloud-storage site and the document on it disappeared just as Mrs Leonard began looking at it. The techs told us that it would be impossible for any website to transmit a signal to damage a RFID chip. The cloud-storage account that the doc was in was a temporary one created with an anonymous email address and was only active for a few hours, according to the techs who investigated.

“So in summary, we’re at a loss to explain how and why this happened; the only concrete fact is that many or most of the students in the school—that we know of—had their chips inactivated. We interviewed two children whose chips weren’t affected—they came to school naked today—and they both said that they were afraid that their parents would punish them if they stayed in the room when the chips were ... whatever was done to them. Other students who were in the room will only say that they were told to report to the Media Center room and were extremely surprised to learn that they could get their RFID chips inactivated. And quite happy about it, I might add. Every student who we asked had the distinct impression, when they were reading the vanished on-screen document, that some kind of large organization was behind the chip-inactivation, and something in the doc’s wording suggested to many that it was an out-of-state organization.

“I sincerely hope you have no questions because I told you everything we know about this totally weird event.”

Someone in the audience came up to the mike in the aisle anyway.

“Dr Barello, this isn’t about the incident—it’s a general question. How do you feel about the SiF program in your school? If you decided to end it, what happened would be the ideal way to do it.”

Barello stared at the man. “Sir, I hope you’re not attempting to impugn my character by suggesting that either I or my staff would break a state law by interfering with the SiF program. I’m not a fan of it; the SiF causes real classroom management issues and plays havoc with our dress-code policy. But as a public employee, I am sworn to follow state policies and laws. Other questions?”

A woman stepped up. “Ma’am, what is it about a cell phone that can damage one of those chip things? Does that mean cell phones are dangerous?”

Barello shook her head. “I’m positive that cell phones are completely safe. I have zero knowledge of the technology, so I really can’t tell you any more than what I mentioned earlier.”

Another woman. “What will happen with those SiF kids? Are they being punished?”

“They were all very smartly dressed in the proper clothing and smiling when they came to school today. And the SiF scanners at the school doors were quite happy to let them pass without sounding an alarm, showing that their chips no longer work. What will happen to them? I heard that a similar thing happened at Thomas Mann Middle School ... last year? Two years ago? In that case, the SiF people tried and failed to get the parents to have replacement chips implanted in their kids when those chips stopped working. The way the law reads, without a chip, you can’t be naked in public and a dead chip is no chip. No chip, no punishment. I truly hope you have no more questions because the last two really didn’t have much to do with how our weird incident happened. No one? Wonderful. Let’s move on to the scheduled topic.

“Why the officials in charge of education and other social areas are so concerned with the nudity of our children is beyond me, but that’s what we are facing with both the SiF program and now in the Naked in School Program. The NiS Program—I’ll call it the ‘Program’ from now on—is a federal invention and you know, from the materials you got from the school district earlier this year, that it’s a kind of federal social engineering project designed to make children comfortable with their developing bodies. I’m not going to debate the merits of this with anyone because we, at the school level, have zero voice in the Program’s design or how it’s administered.

“So far, Florida has been unable to start the Program in its schools basically because of the SiF Act. Florida law currently prohibits a child’s nudity unless they are enrolled in SiF. Legal penalties, plus fines, are assessed if a child, who is not in SiF, is naked outside the child’s home—or in any public space, except in locker rooms or similar places.

“The SiF law authorizes a court to assess a $5000 fine and community service for violators and mandates that the child’s parents must enroll their child in SiF if the child is naked in any public setting and doesn’t have an implanted chip. On the other hand, the NiS Program requires a child’s nudity in many public places—while traveling to school, while at school, and while at all school functions, including public ones like football games.

“The difficulty that the Florida education department is currently facing is that the SiF program is enrolled as a state law but the NiS Program is a curriculum requirement, mandated by a federal law, that the state education department is required to implement. Without carving a loophole in the SiF law, the state can’t start the NiS Program in our schools. And with the current scandal surrounding the SiF law in the capital, legislators aren’t willing to even touch the SiF law, it’s such a political hot potato now.

“Another major impediment to starting the NiS Program is Florida’s sex abuse laws. When they passed the SiF law, to try to protect children from sexual predators and abuse, the legislature made the abuse, assault, and battery laws pertaining to kids so strict, that should a school official even suggest that a child strip as a NiS Program participant, that could get him a twenty-year prison sentence for sexual assault. So those laws would need to be changed too, or an exemption made. But what legislator would stick his neck out as being in favor of liberalizing child-abuse laws?

“Finally, here at Miami Edison High, although we’re not proud of it, our current graduation rate is just below the cutoff that the school district has set to start the NiS Program in Miami-Dade high schools. That is, whenever it starts. So whatever happens at state level, it won’t affect our school this year and probably not even the following year.

“I just wanted to give all of you parents this heads-up on the Program to try to dispel any damaging rumors, which I’m sure you know can upset and terrify your children about things like forced nudity in the schools. That issue remains, even given their experience in seeing the SiF kids. Seeing how classrooms work with SiF students in them makes me wonder how we’d ever control our classes if NiS Program rules are adopted. That’s all I have on that topic; I can take questions now.”

There were a few questions that addressed trivial issues and some that required making some really far-fetched assumptions. Barello shrugged those off as unanswerable at the current time. Then the meeting ended.

Later that evening

“So that Naked in School thing won’t be starting this year?” Tamara asked after her parents told her about the parents’ meeting.

“No. There’re way too many hurdles for officials to clear,” Wilson told her. “Also, the SiF program may also be in trouble because it costs the state too much to run. I’m guessing that it’ll be left to limp along without Florida putting much more money into it. There’s so much invested in the infrastructure that I’m sure the state won’t simply drop it.”

“Okay, I’ll keep doing my little part in helping it go away,” Tamara giggled.

She did indeed continue to do her part by using her improved zapper, triggering it whenever she came close to a naked kid. Soon it became widespread knowledge that if a SiF kid spent enough time in the Little Haiti and surrounding neighborhoods, their chip would become deactivated. SiF officials were extremely frustrated because very limited funds were available to learn why the chips were being affected in that particular area of the city.

Miami Edison High School: January

Tamara continued to do her part in the school’s tutoring program too. After the holidays and with the end of the grading period, she had several requests to tutor some athletes. She had two boys and a girl who wanted help to raise their math grades. When she met one boy, a wrestling team member, she was concerned.

Something’s wrong, she mused. His aura tastes ... bitter light orange? What’s that about?

She soon found out when the boy began making suggestive comments about her appearance.

“Hugh,” she said sharply, “you’re here to get class help. This isn’t a social event; we’re not on a date, and I don’t care for your comments.”

“But you’re cute, Tammie, and I want to get to know you better...”

“The name is Tamara. Now let’s get back to the math.”

He leered at her, “First you’ll need to kiss me. And I’ll show you I got something nice and hard for you.”

Tamara knew what the “bitter-light-orange” was now—some kind of predatory lust. She thought the guy was acting disgusting, so that’s what she decided to do about him—make him ill. She gathered a dark pink-colored taste with streaks of brown and gently “pushed” the aura to him.

“Hugh, this is how you’ll feel every time you see me,” she whispered to him as his face became ashen and he lurched away, running for the closest boys’ room.

After that incident, Tamara began to wonder about boys and the lack of attraction she felt for them.

It seems that most are so immature, she thought. The ninth- and tenth-graders are still like little boys trying to act grown up. The older ones are clueless, jerks, or have a conceited, self-important attitude. Even the nerdy, shy boys don’t attract me. I don’t find that any boys are emotionally appealing and their physical appearance has no effect on me. Is there something wrong with me?

She decided to ask her mother about her fears when she got home.

“Mom, I had something happen today; a boy started hitting on me and became very pushy. So I made sure that he won’t come near me anymore.”

“Not too damaging, I hope,” Nadine replied, smiling.

“Not really. A bit of nausea is all. But that made me wonder. I feel no attraction to any of the boys at school—they’re immature or too full of themselves, mostly. And if you ask me about girls, no, I’m not oriented that way either. I hear the girls talk about ‘hot guys’ who make them feel ... they say things like ‘all squishy inside.’ Is there something wrong with me?”

Nadine sighed and invited Tamara to sit on the couch with her.

“Tamara, honey, the blessing of your gift, your ability, that power contains a curse as well. You sense people’s emotions and auras and what you sense in them overrides any effect that their physical appearance may have on you. Those senses of yours probably don’t even let male posturing affect you. Because that’s what males do to attract females. All over the animal kingdom, you can see how male behavior is linked to attracting females. Teen girls, with their puberty hormones ruling their emotions, tend to respond to the posturing of teen boys. That even extends to the allure of the media stars. You’re simply immune to that. The guy who finally attracts you will be intellectually and emotionally compatible with you, so I wouldn’t worry. You’ll know when you’re ready to consider entering a romantic relationship. I was just like you until I met your father. I could sense in him his guiding lwa, Ogorin, and I knew that we were meant to be mates.”

“So you didn’t have any crushes growing up?”

“Nope. Just like you; I was fixated on my learning and had no time for boys.”

“Oh, that makes me feel loads better. I do have a number of friends, the kids I hang with, and some are boys. But I have no romantic feelings for anyone—not even the pop stars a lot of kids swoon over.”

“There’s that male posturing at work again—media stars use it. The female stars do similar things to attract in their own way. Music can be a powerful emotional and sexual attractant too,” Nadine told her. “So can acting. Movies allow the viewer to imagine themselves in the scenes. It creates powerful fantasies. In one of my psych classes, I learned about associationism. That’s where the mind’s processes are connected from one state to the next and if the person feels rewarded, even if the reward is only imagined, they can get great pleasure. Now see what you’ve done, gotten me into a lecture mode.”

Tamara shook her head. “Oh no, Manman, that was an awesome explanation. I think from now on, as far as boys are concerned, if I feel that same taste from anyone, now I know how to deflect any amorous or lustful ideas. Like I do when I make myself ‘small.’”

“Just remember, sweetie, that there’s nothing at all wrong with you, okay?”

Tamara hugged her mother. “Okay. And thanks.”

Five months later

The rest of Tamara’s freshman year passed uneventfully. There was no news on both the SiF Act and the Naked in School Program on the political front, until mid-May when, once again from Tallahassee, the capitol, came a report from legislative observers, who noted that the House Education Sub-committee had begun discussing possible amendments to the SiF Act. The news article was a small one and was printed in the state news section of the Miami Herald on the third page. Little notice was taken about the news item at first, but two weeks later, that news had become a TV evening news topic.

The Alexandre family heard that there would be a report on the status of both the Stripped in Florida Act and the Naked in School Program on the News at Six program, so after dinner, they gathered to watch it. The item came on at about 6:10 p.m.