Commentary(Streaking)

The news of nine male NUS students streaking in their university compounds at 4am in the morning has been quite a sensational topic of debate and discussion over the past few weeks for both concerned and unconcerned parties across the island. Talks about streaking and those dared to break the taboo in this highly conservative society was all over the newspaper forum pages for days and debates and discussions were all over the net from the online forum 'Stomp' to personal blogs and educational blogs such as this blog of mine. Streaking is defined as the non-sexual act of running in public in partial or full nudity, and is something common that has been taking place around the world in less conservative countries which view freedom of expression as the basic human right. University students streaking around town has been some thing so common that it is even dubbed as a form of tradition. Well, like I mentioned, that's for the less old-fashioned places which value the fundamental human right of freedom of expression.

Being someone who values freedom more than gold, I believe that even though these acts of streaking cannot be completely justified as something that should be done, it is still something that is acceptable, provided that the streakers are just youths who do them out of sheer youthful exuberance and for the sake of fun and adventure. Thus, the streaking by the NUS students should have been forgiven.

In my opinion, the question of whether streaking is acceptable or not has a lot to do with the social principles and norms of the era, aka ethics. Taking a look at the case of the nine NUS students who were expelled from their residence halls brings back to my mind about a point I made the previous post which was supposed to be an attempt at a simple argument kinda thing. I know I didn't quite succeed. Anyway, if students were to be allowed to have a say in making of some rules on streaking, these nine fun-loving and adventurous guys who were just trying to make their college experience a memorable one might not have been punished in such an unreasonable way by the conservative people with their imperfect, dusty, cobwebby rules and morals of what should be and what should not be that they came up by themselves for themselves. But wait, let's not go too much into there. I would not want to be breaking the rules, morals and whatever-s on blogging, that is if anyone ever hates freedom of speech that much to come up with some. Okay, okay, I'm digressing I know.

So, to get on with it, some individuals justify that streaking should not be allowed and streakers should be severely punished because the act of streaking goes against the law. Oh, and laws of cos are based on the concrete and entirely non-subjective moral standards of the infallible law-makers. Streaking goes against the law as it is a form of undesired sexual exposure. The nine students who were sexually inspired and motivated by the victory of their hall, therefore ought to be punished. Young children who happened to be awake and walking around in the university compounds at 4 o'clock in the morning might also have been exposed to the traumatizing, grotesque, life-threatening and terrifying sight of, er, the male human anatomy. All these justifies for the lenient, insignificant punishment of these criminal students having nowhere to stay. I do not know which parts of the above mentioned statements sound wrong anymore cos I'm so sleepy. If you see any, please do leave me a comment on it. Okay, you know I'm being sarcastic. The fact that's being tried to be pointed out here (,but most probably failed,) by me is that although what they did was probably wrong, these students did not really cause anything much of a damage except to the unwilling onlookers who, er, looked and felt offended because they looked. So I feel that such a harsh punishment is not justifiable. Therefore, they should be forgiven.