Glass Half Full: Campus streaking reaveals more than skin
Baring it all, exhibitionists get a chance to be original — ju st like everybody else
By Traci Cox, staff writer
Posted on January 16, 2007

Nudists are taking over our campus.

You’ve probably seen them, running amok like proverbial headless chickens, screaming like Ricky Bobby on fire except with a black stocking suffocating their clearly identifiable faces.

Streaking on college campuses is a fairly common activity. The first streak ever recorded occurred in 1804 at what is now the conservative Washington & Lee University, inspiring thousands of other young college students to “bare it all” in public. Since then, indecent exposure has become engrained into the curriculum of college culture. Among swimming in ponds of viral plague and going at it while shoved against a musty pile of books, streaking the Quad claims the top spot in the creation of an “unforgettable” college experience.

Yet, while students may be willing to “bare” their shrinking appendages in some sad attempt to display how ballsy they are (oh, the irony!), are they really “bearing” anything at all?

Prancing around for 100 yards in 20-degree weather is truly a rigorous test of endurance. So is eating 23 grilled cheese sandwiches in one sitting at D-hall. Reading all the texts available at the Carrier Library on the history of the Marx Brothers is equally as taxing. Disappointingly, when speaking of the most valued experiences of their college careers, I fear running around naked will be prime on many a JMU student’s list instead of something truly worthwhile and meaningful to them.

In the film “Almost Famous,” Frances McDormand’s character, mother Elaine Miller, inquires of her son: “Who put such a high premium on being typical?” Receiving an education teaches us to question traditions and practices. Instead of instituting this method outside of the classroom, we blindly follow the “five steps to achieving ultimate college happiness,” while disregarding our true feelings about your statistics professor seeing your flabby, pale and unoriginal derriere.

This isn’t an issue about students’ relative ideas about having fun. It’s about values and the evident lack thereof on our campus. Yes, streaking is illegal, thus its main appeal. It is considered a major violation to the codes established by James Madison University’s Judicial Jurisdiction. In some situations, this seemingly harmless prank is considered a form of sexual harassment. Being locked up and naked in a jail cell: now that’s a bad combination.

While used as a form of protest, whether against social norms or the law itself, streaking doesn’t create the impact a sit-in or rally does. In reality, it accomplishes nothing of value or substance, and can create more problems (missing clothes or a night in the slammer, for example) than amusing stories.

It seems as though there is some unspoken peer pressure that provokes this state of undress. In the annals of college fame, making it to the top of the rock wall or bearing your poetic soul at TDU’s Open Mic Night are equally ballsy, yet conspicuously absent from the top five. Somehow, a paltry event such as flashing everyone and their mother makes it to the top. Here’s a paradox: anyone can get naked. Suddenly, an exhilarating thrill seems more like a banal chore.

While I do not want to see your, as Bridget Jones would say, “wobbly bits,” shaking all over the Quad, I do want college students to feel free to express themselves. After all, this is the time to bare it all; how you do it is up to you.

Traci Cox is a sophomore English major.