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Chapter 15 - A Naked in School Program?

The parents’ meeting the following evening began as an unruly affair. Many parents were worked up about the recent SiF news: first, the exposé in the Tallahassee newspaper, which had been picked up by all the remaining newspapers in the state; second, news of a scandal in the state government which had just broken, involving payoffs to elected legislature members to ensure that the SiF program would be implemented despite its costs; and third, rumors about the SiF chip deactivation incident in the high school the day before.

Principal Barello tried to restore order as questions were shouted at her.

“Please! Please settle down. I’ll answer your questions but let’s do this... orderly. I’ll tell you what we know about yesterday’s incident, then answer questions about it. After that, I’ll talk about the subject for this informational meeting.”

After everyone got settled, she began.

“What happened yesterday is a mystery to the whole staff and faculty here. We carefully reviewed everyone’s recollections and the most coherent story we can assemble is that Mr Bill Jones, our technology teacher, had a note on his calendar from a few days ago about a state survey in some high schools, to be conducted by computer, about how kids in the SiF program were adapting to being always naked. He didn’t recall when he entered that in his schedule and has no idea where he got the request to set that survey up. We found out today that there was no such survey. He reserved time on our Media Center’s computers and his calendar note said that Mrs Leonard, our assistant principal, would send the selected students to complete the survey. That was our earliest written record of the event, from four days ago.

“Then Mrs Leonard noticed that the office secretary had copies of instructions and lists of the students, by grade, who had been selected to participate in the survey. The secretary told me that she had assumed that the lists came from Mrs Leonard, but Mrs Leonard said she had no knowledge of any such lists and that it appeared to her that Mr Jones had provided the lists; however, he denied having any knowledge of the names of any students enrolled in the SiF program and there’s no reason that he would even have any such names—and even stranger, there was no way for him to get the names, without Mrs Leonard knowing about it.

“But somehow, every single name on the four lists that the secretary had was a SiF child. The school doesn’t even keep a separate list of students in SiF; a notation about their school dress code exemption only appears in their individual personal records. Those student records are quite secure; Mrs Leonard did not prepare those lists, so how those student names came to be on the lists is baffling to us. The only possible way is that the county SiF office sent the lists to the school, but they deny doing that. They claim that they don’t have children’s names associated with any school.

“That’s just the first mystery. The second is what happened to inactivate the chips. There seems to be a cell phone app involved, but the technicians who looked at that app said that it was not remotely possible that that particular app could inactivate RFID chips. There was a website involved too, but that was a document cloud-storage site and the document on it disappeared just as Mrs Leonard began looking at it. The techs told us that it would be impossible for any website to transmit a signal to damage a RFID chip. The cloud-storage account that the doc was in was a temporary one created with an anonymous email address and was only active for a few hours, according to the techs who investigated.

“So in summary, we’re at a loss to explain how and why this happened; the only concrete fact is that many or most of the students in the school—that we know of—had their chips inactivated. We interviewed two children whose chips weren’t affected—they came to school naked today—and they both said that they were afraid that their parents would punish them if they stayed in the room when the chips were... whatever was done to them. Other students who were in the room will only say that they were told to report to the Media Center room and were extremely surprised to learn that they could get their RFID chips inactivated. And quite happy about it, I might add. Every student who we asked had the distinct impression, when they were reading the vanished on-screen document, that some kind of large organization was behind the chip-inactivation, and something in the doc’s wording suggested to many that it was an out-of-state organization.

“I sincerely hope you have no questions because I told you everything we know about this totally weird event.”

Someone in the audience came up to the mike in the aisle anyway.

“Dr Barello, this isn’t about the incident—it’s a general question. How do you feel about the SiF program in your school? If you decided to end it, what happened would be the ideal way to do it.”

Barello stared at the man. “Sir, I hope you’re not attempting to impugn my character by suggesting that either I or my staff would break a state law by interfering with the SiF program. I’m not a fan of it; the SiF causes real classroom management issues and plays havoc with our dress-code policy. But as a public employee, I am sworn to follow state policies and laws. Other questions?”

A woman stepped up. “Ma’am, what is it about a cell phone that can damage one of those chip things? Does that mean cell phones are dangerous?”

Barello shook her head. “I’m positive that cell phones are completely safe. I have zero knowledge of the technology, so I really can’t tell you any more than what I mentioned earlier.”

Another woman. “What will happen with those SiF kids? Are they being punished?”

“They were all very smartly dressed in the proper clothing and smiling when they came to school today. And the SiF scanners at the school doors were quite happy to let them pass without sounding an alarm, showing that their chips no longer work. What will happen to them? I heard that a similar thing happened at Thomas Mann Middle School... last year? Two years ago? In that case, the SiF people tried and failed to get the parents to have replacement chips implanted in their kids when those chips stopped working. The way the law reads, without a chip, you can’t be naked in public and a dead chip is no chip. No chip, no punishment. I truly hope you have no more questions because the last two really didn’t have much to do with how our weird incident happened. No one? Wonderful. Let’s move on to the scheduled topic.

“Why the officials in charge of education and other social areas are so concerned with the nudity of our children is beyond me, but that’s what we are facing with both the SiF program and now in the Naked in School Program. The NiS Program—I’ll call it the ‘Program’ from now on—is a federal invention and you know, from the materials you got from the school district earlier this year, that it’s a kind of federal social engineering project designed to make children comfortable with their developing bodies. I’m not going to debate the merits of this with anyone because we, at the school level, have zero voice in the Program’s design or how it’s administered.

“So far, Florida has been unable to start the Program in its schools basically because of the SiF Act. Florida law currently prohibits a child’s nudity unless they are enrolled in SiF. Legal penalties, plus fines, are assessed if a child, who is not in SiF, is naked outside the child’s home—or in any public space, except in locker rooms or similar places.

“The SiF law authorizes a court to assess a $5000 fine and community service for violators and mandates that the child’s parents must enroll their child in SiF if the child is naked in any public setting and doesn’t have an implanted chip. On the other hand, the NiS Program requires a child’s nudity in many public places—while traveling to school, while at school, and while at all school functions, including public ones like football games.

“The difficulty that the Florida education department is currently facing is that the SiF program is enrolled as a state law but the NiS Program is a curriculum requirement, mandated by a federal law, that the state education department is required to implement. Without carving a loophole in the SiF law, the state can’t start the NiS Program in our schools. And with the current scandal surrounding the SiF law in the capital, legislators aren’t willing to even touch the SiF law, it’s such a political hot potato now.

“Another major impediment to starting the NiS Program is Florida’s sex abuse laws. When they passed the SiF law, to try to protect children from sexual predators and abuse, the legislature made the abuse, assault, and battery laws pertaining to kids so strict, that should a school official even suggest that a child strip as a NiS Program participant, that could get him a twenty-year prison sentence for sexual assault. So those laws would need to be changed too, or an exemption made. But what legislator would stick his neck out as being in favor of liberalizing child-abuse laws?

“Finally, here at Miami Edison High, although we’re not proud of it, our current graduation rate is just below the cutoff that the school district has set to start the NiS Program in Miami-Dade high schools. That is, whenever it starts. So whatever happens at state level, it won’t affect our school this year and probably not even the following year.

“I just wanted to give all of you parents this heads-up on the Program to try to dispel any damaging rumors, which I’m sure you know can upset and terrify your children about things like forced nudity in the schools. That issue remains, even given their experience in seeing the SiF kids. Seeing how classrooms work with SiF students in them makes me wonder how we’d ever control our classes if NiS Program rules are adopted. That’s all I have on that topic; I can take questions now.”

There were a few questions that addressed trivial issues and some that required making some really far-fetched assumptions. Barello shrugged those off as unanswerable at the current time. Then the meeting ended.

Later that evening

“So that Naked in School thing won’t be starting this year?” Tamara asked after her parents told her about the parents’ meeting.

“No. There’re way too many hurdles for officials to clear,” Wilson told her. “Also, the SiF program may also be in trouble because it costs the state too much to run. I’m guessing that it’ll be left to limp along without Florida putting much more money into it. There’s so much invested in the infrastructure that I’m sure the state won’t simply drop it.”

“Okay, I’ll keep doing my little part in helping it go away,” Tamara giggled.

She did indeed continue to do her part by using her improved zapper, triggering it whenever she came close to a naked kid. Soon it became widespread knowledge that if a SiF kid spent enough time in the Little Haiti and surrounding neighborhoods, their chip would become deactivated. SiF officials were extremely frustrated because very limited funds were available to learn why the chips were being affected in that particular area of the city.

Miami Edison High School: January

Tamara continued to do her part in the school’s tutoring program too. After the holidays and with the end of the grading period, she had several requests to tutor some athletes. She had two boys and a girl who wanted help to raise their math grades. When she met one boy, a wrestling team member, she was concerned.

Something’s wrong, she mused. His aura tastes... bitter light orange? What’s that about?

She soon found out when the boy began making suggestive comments about her appearance.

“Hugh,” she said sharply, “you’re here to get class help. This isn’t a social event; we’re not on a date, and I don’t care for your comments.”

“But you’re cute, Tammie, and I want to get to know you better...”

“The name is Tamara. Now let’s get back to the math.”

He leered at her, “First you’ll need to kiss me. And I’ll show you I got something nice and hard for you.”

Tamara knew what the “bitter-light-orange” was now—some kind of predatory lust. She thought the guy was acting disgusting, so that’s what she decided to do about him—make him ill. She gathered a dark pink-colored taste with streaks of brown and gently “pushed” the aura to him.

“Hugh, this is how you’ll feel every time you see me,” she whispered to him as his face became ashen and he lurched away, running for the closest boys’ room.

After that incident, Tamara began to wonder about boys and the lack of attraction she felt for them.

It seems that most are so immature, she thought. The ninth- and tenth-graders are still like little boys trying to act grown up. The older ones are clueless, jerks, or have a conceited, self-important attitude. Even the nerdy, shy boys don’t attract me. I don’t find that any boys are emotionally appealing and their physical appearance has no effect on me. Is there something wrong with me?

She decided to ask her mother about her fears when she got home.

“Mom, I had something happen today; a boy started hitting on me and became very pushy. So I made sure that he won’t come near me anymore.”

“Not too damaging, I hope,” Nadine replied, smiling.

“Not really. A bit of nausea is all. But that made me wonder. I feel no attraction to any of the boys at school—they’re immature or too full of themselves, mostly. And if you ask me about girls, no, I’m not oriented that way either. I hear the girls talk about ‘hot guys’ who make them feel ... they say things like ‘all squishy inside.’ Is there something wrong with me?”

Nadine sighed and invited Tamara to sit on the couch with her.

“Tamara, honey, the blessing of your gift, your ability, that power contains a curse as well. You sense people’s emotions and auras and what you sense in them overrides any effect that their physical appearance may have on you. Those senses of yours probably don’t even let male posturing affect you. Because that’s what males do to attract females. All over the animal kingdom, you can see how male behavior is linked to attracting females. Teen girls, with their puberty hormones ruling their emotions, tend to respond to the posturing of teen boys. That even extends to the allure of the media stars. You’re simply immune to that. The guy who finally attracts you will be intellectually and emotionally compatible with you, so I wouldn’t worry. You’ll know when you’re ready to consider entering a romantic relationship. I was just like you until I met your father. I could sense in him his guiding lwa, Ogorin, and I knew that we were meant to be mates.”

“So you didn’t have any crushes growing up?”

“Nope. Just like you; I was fixated on my learning and had no time for boys.”

“Oh, that makes me feel loads better. I do have a number of friends, the kids I hang with, and some are boys. But I have no romantic feelings for anyone—not even the pop stars a lot of kids swoon over.”

“There’s that male posturing at work again—media stars use it. The female stars do similar things to attract in their own way. Music can be a powerful emotional and sexual attractant too,” Nadine told her. “So can acting. Movies allow the viewer to imagine themselves in the scenes. It creates powerful fantasies. In one of my psych classes, I learned about associationism. That’s where the mind’s processes are connected from one state to the next and if the person feels rewarded, even if the reward is only imagined, they can get great pleasure. Now see what you’ve done, gotten me into a lecture mode.”

Tamara shook her head. “Oh no, Manman, that was an awesome explanation. I think from now on, as far as boys are concerned, if I feel that same taste from anyone, now I know how to deflect any amorous or lustful ideas. Like I do when I make myself ‘small.’”

“Just remember, sweetie, that there’s nothing at all wrong with you, okay?”

Tamara hugged her mother. “Okay. And thanks.”

Five months later

The rest of Tamara’s freshman year passed uneventfully. There was no news on both the SiF Act and the Naked in School Program on the political front, until mid-May when, once again from Tallahassee, the capitol, came a report from legislative observers, who noted that the House Education Sub-committee had begun discussing possible amendments to the SiF Act. The news article was a small one and was printed in the state news section of the Miami Herald on the third page. Little notice was taken about the news item at first, but two weeks later, that news had become a TV evening news topic.

The Alexandre family heard that there would be a report on the status of both the Stripped in Florida Act and the Naked in School Program on the News at Six program, so after dinner, they gathered to watch it. The item came on at about 6:10 p.m.

“Continuing with news about happenings in the capitol of the Sunshine State, we’ll go to Janice Carver from the WMIA education desk. She’s been following the latest situation in Tallahassee about what the state is doing about the languishing Stripped in Florida program and the proposed federal Naked in School Program. Welcome, Janice. Tell us what you found out about the problems with these programs.”

“Thank you, Sylvia.

“The Florida legislature is still recovering from the bribery scandal over the Stripped in Florida program last year, which saw the resignation of three state legislature members, the dismissal of several department deputy heads, and multiple prosecutions. But now the Education Sub-committee of the House of Representatives has finally turned their attention to the Stripped in Florida bill itself. Until they took up this bill to review it for any needed changes earlier this month, they hadn’t made any effort to amend it. A highly placed spokesman in the House told this reporter last year, off the record, that the House, quote, ‘wasn’t going to touch that bill; there’s too much lost money there to try to fix it,’ unquote.

“Well, now the time and need to fix it has arrived. With increasing pressure coming from the federal government for Florida to begin adopting the Naked in School Program in its high schools, the SiF Act needs changes, because many of its provisions would actually make many of the rules that the Naked in School Program requires to be followed illegal in this state. If Florida fails to immediately begin the Naked in School Program, federal officials have threatened to terminate their education funding. That currently amounts to 16 percent of the state’s education budget in direct costs and another 9 percent in competitive grants—a quarter of the state education budget. Florida can’t afford to ignore that.

“We reported on the Naked in School Program here last year and listeners may recall that the Program requires that each public high school adopt it into their school’s curriculum. The Program’s basic premise is supposedly to help teenagers to become more in touch with their developing bodies and requires them to attend school and all school activities while naked. Program participants are required to permit other students to fondle them sexually; they must perform sexual acts as part of classroom activities; and in many cases, we have heard that the sexual acts can include copulation. Many critics of the Program claim that most of the required sexual activities are not voluntarily performed by participants. In addition, there are other controversial activities that students must perform while they are Program participants.

“The requirement to begin the NiS Program conflicts with the SiF Act, which makes it illegal for children to be publically naked unless they are registered in the SiF program. And the SiF Act contains strict provisions which provide enhanced penalties for abuse, assault, and battery in prosecutions where a child is the victim; while those provisions are in effect, even a verbal request to perform anything remotely resembling a sexual act, even a simple demand to disrobe, which is at the core of the Naked in School Program, could be prosecuted as a second-degree felonious assault.

“To discuss these issues, we invited Mr James Donnelly, the legal director of the Florida ACLU, to join us by video chat, and he’s on the line now. Mr Donnelly, our listeners would like your opinion of the SiF Act and how Florida can change it to allow the Naked in School Program; so, greetings to you and thanks for your time.”

“Hello, Janice. Glad to be here.”

“The role of the ACLU in opposing the SiF Act is well known. Your organization, although you couldn’t prevent the passage of the act, did get the legislature to include strict penalties for sexual abuse from potential predators and the ACLU was insistent that only the child’s parents or legal guardians, acting jointly, could register their child. And that the child’s registration must be done voluntarily by the parents or guardians.”

“That’s true, Janice. But we’ve seen cases of coercion—such as in cases where a child who isn’t in the SiF program was found naked in public—as part of the fines and penalties assessed to them, parents are being coerced into registering their child under threat of a larger fine. We try to fight such cases when they come to our notice.”

“So now, Mr Donnelly, we have the conflict between a Florida law and a federal education requirement. There’s a direct conflict here. What can you tell us about how the state intends to resolve these conflicts?”

“In the preliminary hearings, Janice, there was a lot of grandstanding about how the state needs to recover the money it lost in building out the infrastructure when it adopted the SiF program. It looks very much like the representatives have no intention of repealing that act, even though operating it is putting the state deeper in the hole every year it runs. Several of the committee members have been pushing to make registration in the SiF program mandatory as part of the Naked in School Program; that is, the children chosen as a participant must get enrolled in SiF. And since the intention of the feds who devised the Naked in School Program was to ensure that every high school child would eventually be a participant, those committee members are pushing their idea because every kid in the state would have to be naked, producing significant revenue.”

“But the SiF law specifically gives only parents the right to enroll their kids...”

“True, so that’s one part of the SiF Act which they are proposing to change. Our office has already sent our comments to the committee that we will contest any changes that impact the private lives of Florida citizens. We reminded them of the provision in a 1980 amendment to the Florida Constitution which says, ‘Every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person’s private life.’ The Florida Supreme Court has ruled about that amendment, saying that it ‘...extends to all aspects of an individual’s private life... and it ensures that the state cannot intrude into an individual’s private life absent a compelling interest.’”

“A final question, Mr Donnelly. How would the Naked in School Program be affected by the abuse laws in the SiF Act?”

“From what I’ve read about the Naked in School Program, school officials would have a very difficult time following all the NiS Program rules without running afoul of those sections which address child-abuse situations. And writing loopholes into laws to accommodate special cases for relaxing legal provisions has always been fraught with major problems. That is a very difficult problem to overcome.”

“I want to thank you very much for providing those insights, Mr Donnelly.”

“My pleasure, Janice.”

“Mr James Donnelly is the legal director of the Florida ACLU. This is Janice Carver reporting from the WMIA education desk; back to you, Sylvia.”

Tamara was troubled. “Does this mean that they might be able to start the Naked in School Program here?” she asked.

Nadine shrugged but Wilson said, “There’s a good possibility of that happening now. Money is a huge motivator and the state can’t afford to lose the federal money.”

Early June

Tamara finished her high school freshman year mostly a very happy girl. But there was one thing about which she wasn’t sure just how happy she should be. Her school counselor had told her that her grade level was being advanced to a junior for the fall. She was too far advanced for any classes at the sophomore level now, and the classes she’d be taking were all at junior and senior levels, so she might as well be given that class status. Tamara had just one single class that was at her grade level—it was P.E. The academic class portion of P.E. for the tenth grade was Health and Hygiene and she had no issues with that kind of course, but it was the physical part of P.E. itself that she particularly liked. She found that she enjoyed running especially, but she was coming to like volleyball a lot and was okay at softball. She vowed that she’d keep up the running as her daily exercise since she liked how it made her feel. Tamara thought that, in the general scheme of her education, that moving up to junior class status was a reasonable step.

On the more good-news front, the medical school had helped her father locate a patent attorney whom he liked, and the patent applications for her new coil design had been duly filed. Getting the patent application started was critical since word of her invention had circulated widely in the small MRI community and several companies had already approached Tamara seeking licensing rights. After the attorney had been engaged and the patent application filed, her attorney was able to negotiate some very lucrative licensing packages with two companies. Tamara’s college fund, plus a large trust fund, were created.

She was also pleased about her classes and her ability to keep working on projects in Dr Beauford’s department. And during the next school year, she’d be able to take a physics class at the main University of Miami campus in Coral Gables, located about ten miles south of the high school. With her patent-licensing money, now she’d be able to afford a car service like Uber or Lyft so she could fit the university class into her high-school schedule.

And she was most happy about her success as an anti-SiF vigilante, zapping RFID chips and shop scanners with abandon, as she went on her daily runs. Her little camera zapper, being very portable, was still useful. She was actually running out of targets. Well, she thought, there’s always Coral Gables. But when she went to the university to register for her class, she noticed no naked kids on campus. When she completed her business in the registrar’s office, she asked about that.

“I need to ask—I don’t see any Stripped in Florida kids here or even any scanners...?”

The man helping her had begun grinning before she even finished and held his hand up to stop her question.

“Yeah, that dumb program. We’re a private university and our campus is private property. When the SiF law was being worked out, Florida’s private universities, public ones too, got exemptions. How, you may ask. Simple: all the universities told the legislators that none of us would admit a student who was actively in the SiF program and had to be naked. First, on this campus and our satellites, nudity is prohibited. Second, when a SiF kid turns eighteen, the state can’t force him to remain naked—and most students beginning college are over eighteen. As an adult, an eighteen-year-old’s own decisions overrule his parents’ contract with the state. And finally, we don’t have scanners because there’s no enforcement here.”

Tamara nodded. “Thanks. I wonder where else the SiF law doesn’t apply.”

“Most hospitals, I think. Courthouses—depends on the judges, I heard. I think all federal buildings too.” he replied.

On the way home, Tamara thought, What a really different experience university classes will be.

~~~~

Tamara continued to work at the medical school hospital on her MRI external patient-coil project and on developing more applications for the coil circuits she had invented and now had two additional pending patents for her device. One of the ideas she had was a miniaturized directed-pulse RF transmitter which emitted a pulse similar to a focused light beam. The RF emitters could be installed in external MRI coils and the coils with the device gave the best image resolution the radiologists had seen to date. This project gave her the idea to adapt that kind of transmitter circuitry into a third-generation RFID-tag zapper. Although it was still small, with its collimating reflector, the device was now too big to fit into a little camera housing like her previous versions; besides, she wanted to use a more robust battery. She wound up building the device into a pocket on her backpack and powered it with a 24-volt lithium-ion battery, all supplied by Tim’s stock of surplus or used parts. With a hand-held trigger wirelessly connected to the device, she could now fry chips up to 80 feet away and RFID scanners within about 25 feet on its high-power setting. She added a low-power option for safety.

~~~~

The University of Miami’s summer term was almost finished for Tamara; only ten days were left, when she heard some disturbing news. When she returned from her class at the university, she was bursting to share her news and her mother happened to be home; she had swapped shifts with another worker.

“Hey Mom. In my math class at UMiami, I was talking to a girl—she’s a senior—and she has a little brother who’s gonna be a sophomore at Northwestern High—you know, just on the other side of I-95. She told me that Northwestern’s starting the Naked in School thing in the fall. Her parents got the forms they had to sign last week and get this—there’s no opting out.”

“Your dad and I haven’t heard anything about it from Edison though,” Nadine said. “I guess the government people must have worked out the SiF conflicts.”

The answer actually appeared in that day’s Herald. Wilson brought a copy of the newspaper home. The article gave a brief review of the conflict between the provisions of the SiF Act and the Naked in School requirements. It went on to explain the temporary solution which had just been adopted by both houses of the Florida legislature and had been signed by the governor. He gave the article to Tamara to read.

“...The major difficulties which needed resolution were, first, the conflict between the nudity restrictions provided in the SiF Act, which made public nudity illegal unless the child was enrolled in the SiF program, versus the public nudity requirement of the NiS Program. And second, the sexual abuse provisions of the SiF Act conflicted with the need for school officials to require chosen NiS participants to strip without subjecting the officials to charges of sexual assault.

“The first conflict was resolved by an amendment to the SiF Act which exempts NiS participants from the requirements of the Act, unless, of course, the child is already a SiF registrant. The second issue was more difficult to resolve, since no law-maker wanted to be identified as a liberalizer of any child-abuse law.

“The interim solution for this issue was for an amendment to the abuse section of the Act which carved out an exemption for school officials who, in the course of their NiS supervisory duties, would have a limited exemption from felonious assault charges as a result of any demand for students to strip. This exemption even gave limited protection to forced stripping; however, the amendment stated that the ‘use of excessive force’ was not permitted (the italics are our emphasis and aren’t in the amendment). It is unclear from the amendment’s text, or from the transcripts of the subcommittee’s hearings, precisely how much force would be considered to be ‘excessive.’ This unknown may lead many school officials to be very hesitant to legally test the definition of ‘excessive.’

“The final abuse matter which needed to be addressed was the peer-to-peer sexual interaction between students, a feature of the Naked in School Program. The subcommittee decided to leave enforcement and monitoring of peer-to-peer student interactions up to the school’s administration and made that decision clear in the wording of the SiF Act’s amendment.

“The adoption of this amendment to the SiF Act was the signal for the Florida Department of Education to let district school boards know that they are to commence running the Program when the fall term begins. All schools in the state are expected to be running the Program within six months to a year. We will continue to monitor this issue as best as we can, but the federal Office of Social Awareness, which administers the Naked in School Program, beginning about a year ago, has imposed extremely strict privacy rules about any Program activities in schools; the courts have upheld those rules to ensure the privacy of minors.

“These changes will affect us locally, as the Miami-Dade School Board announced that they will begin the Naked in School Program in selected high schools this fall and in the rest of the schools in the following spring term.”

After she read the article, Tamara asked her father, “How can the government keep info about what happens to kids in the Program private? Look at all those social media channels, like Facebook, Instagram, others... um, WhatsApp, blogs—hey, even on discussion websites that kids can use, like Quora. My high school has a site too and kids can post stuff there.”

Wilson shook his head. “No idea. Go on the internet and see what you find.”

She did and about fifteen minutes later, she had the answer.

“Hey Dad, it looks like the federal Program office actually does stop people from sharing information about the Program. I found this page on Facebook that says that whenever someone tries to start a website or post something on social media, the feds get it shut down within a few days. It says that the feds are even able to shut down sites that’re on foreign web servers too. I wonder how they can do that.

“The owner of this page says that he tries to post text messages and stuff from other sources that he sees about the Program, but when the feds find his posts, they get Facebook to pull his account, so he keeps creating new accounts under different user names. But that’s not a good source of information about the Program. Let me keep... damn, all these government sites show up on Google... the feds must be flooding the search engine... I can’t find any other site that talks about kids’ school experiences. The feds must really have shut everything down.”

“That’s bad news,” Wilson remarked and Tamara agreed.

About twenty minutes later, Nadine came home.

“Hi, phew, busy day today. Got a flock of new patients and I had to cover for Louise too. She called in sick. And I saw an article in the Herald—oh, you have a copy. But I heard something else from Marjory, you know, my charge nurse, well, her daughter is a paralegal in the Miami School District office. The district plans to have the Naked in School Program in every high school by spring term. So, Tamara, you’ll have a new flock of kids to try to protect. What’s so interesting on the computer?”

“Trying to find out anything about what happens in schools where they have that naked program,” Tamara told her.

“And?”

“Nothing. The feds are blocking everything.”

She told Nadine what she learned from that Facebook post.

“Well, maybe the press will dig out something that they can cover,” Nadine commented.

Miami Edison High School: September

Of course, when Edison’s fall term began, the news about the likely start of the Naked in School Program was now a hot discussion topic among the students. But Tamara had other things on her mind too—academics. She had arranged her fall eleventh-grade high school courses to coordinate with her University of Miami classes so that she would spend her Tuesdays and Thursdays at the university, taking a math course on differential calculus and a special projects course in physics, and would also work at the medical school laboratory in the afternoon on those days. In the spring, she planned to enroll in the university’s electricity and magnetism course and continue with the math course. She could arrange such a schedule now as she was an upper-class student on a full AP academic track that provided the ability to take community college courses for academic credit—although Tamara was doing this at a four-year school.

Yet another distraction jarred Tamara her during her first days back in school: there were naked kids in the school again. The incoming freshman class had a number of SiF kids and there were a few transfers from other schools going into the upper grades. Tamara decided on a new tactic to help those kids. She’d wait for one of them to pass by the office and zap their chip while she sat in the office—she had kept her office aide job, and her little desk was close to the glass window-wall which looked out from the office into the main hallway. If she propped her backpack against the back of a chair facing the window, she could watch the hall as kids walked by. If a naked kid passed by, she’d trigger her zapper.

But Tamara didn’t care for the randomness of this approach, so she added a little teaser. She started a rumor that there was some kind of malfunctioning electronic device in the hall near the school’s main door and if you passed by that area several times during the day, your chip would very likely be inactivated. With that rumor as bait, Tamara thought she’d catch more fish—with her red-herring rumor.

It didn’t take long for the school’s rumor mill to spread that news, with the result that a number of stripped kids got their chips zapped so, a week later, two county SiF officials showed up and began using equipment to hunt all over the hallway area, looking for some kind of electronic signal. Then several days later, a tech arrived and began installing what appeared to be a larger version of the typical SiF RFID scanner devices used at the school’s doorways. It was mounted at the window, near Tamara’s student aide desk, with its camera pointed out into the hall. When Tamara arrived at the office for her assigned student aide period, she saw the device and asked the secretary about it.

“They’re trying to find whatever it is that deactivates those SiF tags. The tech said that if that gadget detects any radio signals, its camera will record what’s happening.”

Ooo. Time for some fun, Tamara thought.

Game on.

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