Visual arts students at the University of California, San Diego, must exhibit themselves in the buff before a naked class of 20 and a nude professor or fail an upper-level course, a disgusted mom told KGTV-TV.
But faculty members and former students defend the elective course and maintain that “performing the self” class participants may also employ figurative nudity to pass the final.
The issue is over a syllabus entry that refers to an “erotic self” assignment, requiring students to “create a gesture that traces the outlines or speaks about your ‘erotic self(s).'”
The class description on the Department of Visual Arts website says: “Using autobiography, dream, confession, fantasy or other means to invent one’s self in a new way, or to evoke the variety of selves in our imagination, the course experiments with and explores the rich possibilities available to the contemporary artist in his or her own persona.”
UCSD professor Ricardo Dominguez has been lighting his classroom by candlelight and baring it all alongside his students as part of the assignment for 11 years and never received any complaints, he told the TV station.
“It’s a standard canvas for performance art and body art,” Dominguez said. “If they are uncomfortable with this gesture, they should not take the course.”
But the student’s mother, who is not identified, accused the professor of “perversity” and said the final test was “just wrong.”
“To blanketly say, ‘You must be naked in order to pass my class’ — it makes me sick to my stomach,” she said.
Facebook users peppered the local TV channel’s Facebook page with responses to the story, with several people expressing amazement and outrage about the course.
“As a teacher, I’m appalled that this professor is doing this in the name of teaching art,” one user wrote. “There are many other ways to get students to dig deeper into themselves to learn, grow and experience.”
“That ‘Professor’ sounds like an undercover chester the molester … using his profession to fulfill his pervert needs,” another commenter agreed.
But thsoe who said they took the course endorsed the naked day.
“We had a choice between being nude or doing something emotionally ‘naked’ and every student but one chose to do the nude performance,” one commenter said. “It was uncomfortable for some of us but we were adults and knew what we were getting ourselves into from day one of the class.”
No stranger to controversy, Dominguez once faced a congressional investigation and endured reports by then-Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck for developing a cellphone GPS that helps people cross the U.S.-Mexico border safely, his faculty profile page says.
Dominguez and visual arts division chairman Jordan Crandall didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night.
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