March at Ohio University tops off protest over public-indecency charge
Men, women join rally for the right to take off shirts
Thursday, June 8, 2000
Mary Beth Lane
Dispatch Staff Reporter
Jaimie Beebe touched off a crusade for women's rights when she took off her shirt on a sultry late- spring day in Athens and was arrested.
The Ohio University student's arrest Friday on a public-indecency charge incited dozens of other OU women -- and some men -- to take off their shirts yesterday at noon and march in solidarity from the college green to the steps of the Athens County Courthouse downtown.
The message? It's not about leering at bare breasts. It's about endorsing women's right to feel as comfortable as bare-chested men on a hot day.
That's the way the marching women put it, anyway.
Beebe, 22, is a senior from Ames, Iowa, who is combining cultural photography, English and sociology as her major. She and Dina Rudick, 20, a junior photojournalism major from Canton, organized the march. They estimated that 50 to 75 students participated, with scores of others looking on.
Beebe has pleaded not guilty in Athens Municipal Court. "Men and women have equal rights in Athens,'' she said. "Being topless is an equal right.''
When Beebe removed her shirt Friday on Union Street -- in front of the green across from the Baker Center on campus -- she thought it was a perfectly ordinary thing to do, she said. After all, the male friends she was with that hot day had just removed their shirts, she said.
While campus police were arresting her and taking her fingerprints and mug shot, Beebe was trying to educate them, she said. "I was trying to explain to them that men and women have equal rights.''
She believes the charge will be dismissed.
Ohio law prohibits exposing "private parts,'' but court rulings in at least two cases say women's breasts are not considered private parts, said Jennifer Detwiler, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general.
Public-indecency charges against five Columbus women who marched topless in a gay-pride parade were dismissed in 1995 because of case law determining that it's not indecent for women to bare their breasts.
The women marching yesterday took no chances. They wanted their protest to be about the cause and not about another arrest, Beebe said. So they painted their breasts with cheap acrylic paint. Beebe painted a giant butterfly on herself.
Rudick chose something tougher. "I put on a bull with horns, to symbolize determination and strength,'' she said.
None of the marchers was arrested. Athens police said they arrested a streaking man, who had not been identified last night. The women said the running nude man was not involved in their march.
