Chapter 5

The siblings returned to the main office to get a pass and Davis popped out of his office, astounded to hear their voices in the outer room.

“It’s you! What happened to them...”

“It’s okay, Mr Davis. Minimal damage, two feds arrested. Some MPs came by, hauled the two away, and suggested to the third that the results for any further visits by their people would be much messier,” Cynthia said, trying to stifle a grin. “We just need another late pass.”

“Please come in, the two of you. We need to talk.”

“You’re not going to go into that ‘you need to be in the Program’ argument again, I hope,” Roger said.

“No. I’ve underestimated this situation—that is, the strong student opposition, and want to learn more about what the students are doing.”

“Now that’s a constructive attitude, sir, but we don’t speak for the students. We objected on personal principles, not as a representative of any group. But we’ll be happy to talk about our own opinions.”

They went into Davis’ office and he invited them to sit. The twins explained how their upbringing, the moral code that their parents instilled in them and the Marine concept of personal and community honor, were such a central part of their personalities that subjecting themselves to humiliation was totally repugnant. Furthermore, they would not tolerate submitting to and observing what they considered to be immoral acts. They told him that “honor” included not only personal honor, but honor for one’s family and that the Corps was a family—it was much more than a family, even for the kids of the serviceman or woman. They explained how a Marine’s buddies became closer to him than even his own brother and that a buddy’s injury was also a personal injury; a sense of these close relationships was apparent to the children of the Marine and the need to form similar close relationships became a part of their own psyche as well as their Marine parent’s.

“That’s only one piece of the picture, but if that’s how we were personally affected, the other Marine kids must feel pretty much the same way,” Cynthia continued, “but then came the order from the base’s general that the Marine parents must not allow their children to participate. That was the honor thing again, our community’s honor.”

Roger broke in, “What we read about the purpose of the Program—to become comfortable with ourselves as people and sexual beings—is total nonsense when you consider how the typical serviceman’s kids are raised. We grew up getting to know kids from almost all of the armed services and the kids who are in families from the other services have pretty much the same values. We’re taught a strong respect for authority and for doing the proper things. We’re usually taught to take care of our bodies and to respect others as people and individuals with the same rights that we have—we don’t have the right to tell other people how they must think. In a military community, everyone must totally trust his peers so that they will trust him. So making someone conform to another’s idea of a personal matter like sexuality is a violation of the trust that should exist between peers.

“In school, the effect of the humiliation caused by the forced nudity requirements and public fondling of another’s sexual organs totally destroys any trust between peers—it actually tears people away from each other in disgust rather than bonding them together in respect. That’s what I think you’re seeing in how the kids all pulled together to protect the naked kids, even though I think that none of the ones who are naked are Marine kids. They’re still our peers and need support and respect, not humiliation and objectification. Cindy and I can’t see how the Program could possibly work for us military kids, and for the civilian kids, we know so little of their world we could only guess. Maybe there’d be a few who would benefit somehow, but for most, they may tolerate the experience or be damaged by it.

“And how you started the Program here was terrible, and equally terrible is what you expect us students to endure. On Monday morning you were about to have us physically stripped by staff members; you tried to hold us in a room against our will—that’s actually kidnapping; you’re using coercion with threats of not graduating and transcript withholding—your using coercive methods to get a person to do sexual things, as we’ve since learned, is some kind of felony; you’re permitting, even encouraging, sexual assault and exploitation by exposing naked kids to other students with the expectation that those students will sexually molest them. What’s the next step? Well, the school’s permissiveness in letting students have free access to other kids’ naked bodies could appear to some students that the school is allowing or even encouraging rape.”

“Roger’s right. That’s the official part of the Program that’s abusive. Some other examples of abuse is how the Program wants kids to engage in public displays of masturbation. The dumb Relief idea seems to be included in the rules because of the myth that an excited boy needs to have an orgasm if he gets an erection from being sexually stimulated. I’d think that being humiliated in the way the Program works would actually be a sexual turn-off. Well, I’ve been doing some research and found that there are whole communities where nudity is practiced—resorts and clubs—there’s even a nude beach nearby—and no guy seems to have the need to have an orgasm at those places. So why does it require class time to do that? Then there are the class demonstrations. Already, in our second day, we’ve been told that our naked bodies were needed to demonstrate something for which excellent materials are already available in all possible high-quality media. And that there’s a compelling need to post the videos of the demonstrations on the school website? This has exactly what kind of educational value?” Cynthia exclaimed.

“Well, I’m certainly getting an earful,” Davis commented. “Our Program requirements and curricula are dictated by the federal Program office and all the schools in the entire state must adopt the Program by the coming fall term. There’s no place for exemptions from it or alterations to it, so although I understand your moral objections, I don’t see how the non-participation of your Marine families and the federal participation requirement can be reconciled.”

“That’s pretty much what we assumed and we think it’s what the other students concluded too. I strongly doubt that any Marine kid will participate. I’ve heard rumors that any forcible attempts to strip a kid will result in violence; there’s a lot of very angry students out there and you don’t want serious injuries. Roger and I were actually gentle with your teachers yesterday. We could have seriously damaged them, you know. We only gave them bruises and sprains, just like we give our students in the judo classes we teach. If angry kids feel trapped into resisting, well, I don’t think I need to paint a picture, do you?” Cynthia asked.

“No, we certainly don’t want injuries. But there’s the graduation requirement to consider, too.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Roger continued. “We suppose that you could prevent students from formally graduating. But it seems that that’s a hollow threat, because colleges look at school records, not diplomas. And acceptance offers are made before graduation, as ours were. I personally don’t think that colleges give a flying whatever about someone doing the Program, so withholding final transcripts and that kind of stuff, I think would be counterproductive for the high school’s reputation among the colleges. It would seem to them that the school thinks the Program was more important than the academics, wouldn’t it?”

“Again, there are rules that the school needs to follow, rules that the feds mandate.” Davis demurred.

“So follow the rules and don’t be surprised at how creative the students’ families can be at getting what they need from the school,” Cynthia remarked. “And as far as how the students are handling the Program here and now, we think you should wait it out and see what develops. Your threats didn’t produce any results, right? I think it made the kids even more motivated. I think the general idea seems to be to keep the Program kids away from any forms of humiliation, so it looks like they won’t allow Reasonable Requests since that is only a form of entertainment and exploitation for the requestor and does nothing for the participant. You can let Mr Cirota complain all he wants but it seems that he won’t find any target to direct his punishment at. If the participant does everything he or she is supposed to do but the other students arrange it so that the student can’t be seen, is that a Program violation? Not according to the booklet I read.”

Roger picked up the thought. “Will it cause great harm to anyone—Mr Cirota excepted—if you let things take their natural course? If the Program’s true objective is to let the kids who are willing become comfortable with public nudity, then what the other students are doing isn’t interfering with that at all. If the objective is humiliation, exploitation, sexual predation, and encouraging voyeurism, then those are not valid educational purposes, and what the other students are doing is proper and moral. Can you justify any educational benefit for the latter objective, sir?”