Marking student assignments can be a very interesting job. I often get to read about subjects that, left to my own initiative, it would never have occurred to me to think about. Sometimes the odd idea stands out as worthy of a quick Google search. This was one such idea…
I was reading a report that made a rather generalised claim that women exposing nipples in public is illegal. That sounds ridiculous to me so I Googled UK law and found that there is no law against nudity in England, Scotland or Wales but that it can be rendered illegal if it causes harassment, alarm or distress to someone who complains. Harassment – obviously; alarm or distress – wouldn’t this depend entirely on the action that the naked person is engaged in and not the nudity itself? Anyway, turns out that a bloke called ‘naked rambler’ has tested this out by rambling naked and ended up in prison. My conclusion is that either the ‘naked rambler’ was doing something more offensive than just rambling or there are actually people in the UK who are alarmed and distressed by the action of rambling (the nudity itself not being prison-worthy).
Apart from this insight into the seemingly harmless activities that alarm or distress the British public, it is also a lesson as to why students need to be very specific in their papers. The general claim that it is illegal for women to expose their nipples is not true in the UK so the claim is technically incorrect. This will be reflected in the student’s grade despite the interesting little research project it prompted.