Streakers with Sneakers: Another Gem from 50 Years Ago
By: Alumni Publications | Categories: Tech History
Techwood Drive’s pedestrian population collected and surged through an unusually warm Winter Quarter evening. An olfactory setting emerged, steeped with unbathed fragrance of the student body cramming for finals. To move outdoors and release that pressure had a certain attraction that broke the study lock.
A little while later with mind made up, it was time for me to be bold and hop down from an observation tree branch at 3rd and Techwood to join the fray. No need to present credentials since we were already and entirely drafted. I proceeded to store my objects of possession, then, pretend I had a date with destiny, as a Streaker!
Within one of the mini-legions of the evening’s dalliances, we proceeded according to a sketchy plan to migrate operations from Techwood (Area 1) to Fitten dorm (Area 3). We forged ahead in nothing but running shoes—albeit a good pair of running shoes—and donning optional t-shirts on our skulls, leaving holes for vision. Along the way, it was the perfect time to check our PO boxes, and to savor the odd thrill of climbing the main interior stairway of the Student Center in our birthday suits. The setting looked similar with or without clothes in the same place a few hours earlier. We stood there looking at each other in full building light. No one else outside our group was naked...others could be and would not; we could and did. Strength in numbers emboldened us, giving us a short-lived freedom, whether or not we deserved it.
Here’s to those who pulled it off. Cheers! It was fun to know we did it.
–John Evins, Arch 77, M Arch 84
The 1975 Streakers
Editor’s Note: We asked you to tell us about “history mysteries” for our fall 2024 issue and Kathleen Copeland, Bio 79, asked, who streaked across the grassy lawn near the Area 3 dorms in 1975? Bruce Noggle wrote in to tell us about a similar incident that happened:
On an unusually warm Winter Quarter evening, I was a spectator to the streaking across the grassy lawn near the Area 3 dorms in 1975. Being the creative architecture student, and only seeing streakers running through the streets, I had to come up with something different. Something unique. So, the streaker basketball game was created at the basketball court on the corner of 5th Street and Techwood Drive, the TKE House. It was only 3-on-3, but that was plenty of bodies to be guarding a naked fraternity brother. It gave a new meaning to blocking someone out with full body contact. There were no T-shirts covering our faces, so it was obvious who we were. All things were going well until we looked up and the entire Alpha Xi Delta sorority was watching the spectacle. Realizing that we knew all of them, some of whom we dated, and that they knew all of us, brought the first streaker basketball game to a screaming and sudden halt. Fortunately, it was never brought up by them to us again. That was the end of our streaking career, never to be naked in public again.—Bruce Noggle, Arch 75, M Arch 77
