A Step in a New Direction: Students Go Shoeless

Jewel Mensah

Life & Style

By Rachel Grate

Published 8 months ago

Pomona sophomore Claire Dickey doesn’t like to wear shoes. But before you ask why, Dickey has a question for you: Why do you wear shoes?

"Walking is what your feet are meant for," Dickey said.

Dickey grew up in New Hampshire, where she started going barefoot regularly in her senior year of high school. At first her choice was based on comfort, but resistance to her shoe-free lifestyle made her more determined to continue.

"My teachers would tell me I had to wear shoes," Dickey said. "I would be like, 'No, I don’t really.'"

After snowy New Hampshire winters, Dickey said "walking around barefoot all year long here is really awesome. I feel like I ought to just to remind myself that it is really nice out."

Dickey isn't alone in her desire to let her feet touch the Claremont ground directly. Morgan Luckey HM '14 started leaving her shoes in the dorm during first-year orientation. Luckey credits her continued lack of shoes partly to laziness, but also to "something about the campus and nice smooth cement," and the "rather fuzzy" Scripps grass. "It's fun not to go around in shoes," Luckey said. "It makes the whole day more relaxed and casual."

However, it is this casual appearance that occasionally gets the barefoot into trouble. While Luckey has had no trouble from professors about wearing shoes (and even has some professors who prefer to go shoeless at times as well), Dickey has faced some opposition.

"I was giving a presentation and my professor told me it was rude that I wasn't wearing shoes, which was really surprising to me," Dickey said. "I wasn't dressed sloppily, it was just that I didn't have shoes on… It felt very silly to me."

Another fan of nude feet and a member of Dickey's sponsor group, Alex Lammers PO '14, was kicked out of the dining hall five times in his first week at Pomona for his lack of shoes. Now he carries flip-flops in his backpack for meals.

"There's something about shoes on my feet I don't like," Lammers said. "It's claustrophobic."

Unlike Luckey and Dickey, Lammers lived most of his life without bothering with shoes. "I grew up on a bison ranch in South Dakota," Lammers said. "I walked out on the gravel and the grass barefoot."

In fact, one of Lammers' first barefoot memories was when his horse stepped on his foot and split it open. But Lammers wasn't scared away by his old injury, nor by more recent unpleasant experiences. "A friend stepped in dog poop," Lammers said. "Blacktops get really hot; I once got a blister on my foot from the heat. It's a grossness factor. As long as you can bear having your feet dirty and stepping in some gum occasionally, it's not a big deal."

In addition to the 'grossness factor' Luckey said, "You have to learn to walk differently... I normally walk heel first, and last year I wore down my heels so much that they cracked and started bleeding."

"You have to walk on your toes," Lammers said, "which helps your posture a lot. You're more upright and balanced." Luckey feels this balance applies to all areas of her life. She said going barefoot helped her "just to relax and not worry too much about following the rules. I don't know how many people wear their shoes in their room, but it's extending your room to the outside," Luckey concluded.

Dickey never self-identified as someone who doesn't wear shoes; rather, she simply realized that "if you're in hallways or just walking around, there's no real reason to wear shoes, so it seemed silly to me that everyone felt like they had to. I figured, why not not do it? It seems like if you don't take time to run around barefoot in the grass, then you might be missing out on something," Dickey said. "If you've never done it, you really ought to."