Streaking Students Provoke Complaints and Indifference in Pomona

Seriously, if you can't streak in college, what's the point of even going in the first place? At Pomona College in California, streaking is on the rise and the administration is clamping down on what is being termed "indecent behaviour" stemming from an incident during a recent soccer game.

“People didn’t have much of a reaction because it’s so common,” said Nora Kuby ’10, a member of the women’s soccer team who was on the field at the time of the incident. “I was definitely not offended, just indifferent.”

But it's not the students who are having the problem, it's the alumni and local residents who were at the game.

“Public nudity is actually not allowed,” said Dean of Students Ann Quinley. “I just think students are pushing the envelope, and this is something that should be discouraged.”

Pushing the envelope? Isn't that what college is supposed to encourage students to do? Streaking is the most innocent of college protests, it is a pure "in-your-face" statement that does no harm. A student who bares his or her body while running across a sports field or through a science building is only telling authority that no matter what the institution, no matter what the curriculum or the activity, that "here I am" in the flesh, unencumbered by the trappings of institutional authority. It's an expression of simple freedom, a burst of youthful energy from out of the bonds of stress and the complexities of life.

Despite the existing policy and Quinley’s warning, students continue to act out.
With the number of incidents on the rise, it is clear that college policies have
not prevented students from streaking.

Of course not, the more you tell them not to do it, the more they will. When I was in college in 1973 the streaking phenomenon was at its peak, sometimes there were literally dozens of people, both male and female, running around in groups. One time a group of 4 male students donned masks and tennis shoes and nothing else and streaked the dining hall. The only reaction I recall from authority was the comment of one of the Deans who was quoted in the student newspaper as having said, "The fact that they wore masks proves that they had no balls".

Banning streaking on college campuses is like banning sex. Better to let the kids have their innocent fun to vent a little bit of steam than to impose unenforceable rules.

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