Streaking continues at Williams

[hoosier]

Daily News
Tribune (Boston?) on 11 May:

"WILLIAMSTOWN -- Professor Eva Grudin was about to lead her students
into a discussion of whether an abstract painting was meant to
invoke a certain part of the male anatomy when her class was
interrupted by the real thing.

____ With no warning, two naked students barged into her Williams
College lecture hall, struck a quick pose for the 150 students
there, and ran out.

____ Nothing abstract here. Grudin and her students had just been
streaked.

____ But this was no one-time prank by some drunken college
students. It was yet another performance by two members of the
Springstreakers, the latest unofficial student activity club at this
elite liberal arts college.

____ "It's hard to get your bearings back and continue with your
lecture after that," said Grudin, who let out a shriek that was
followed by her students' laughter, then applause when the streakers
stole everyone's attention from a slide projection of Robert
Motherwell's vaguely phallic depiction of a bull.

____ With two weeks before the end of final exams, Grudin and many
of the students on the prim 2,000-student campus in the Berkshires
say the Springstreakers are offering just the kind of stress relief
that so many need right now.

____ "It's amazing that they do this," said Mon Thach, a freshman
who was streaked in Grudin's art history class late last week. "It
was so funny, and everyone needs a good laugh like that at the end
of the semester."

____ Springstreakers -- the name is a riff on Spring Street, which
cuts through campus -- is the brainchild of Morgan Goodwin and
Andy "Tex" Whinery, two skinny freshmen who say there's no bigger
rush than dropping one's drawers and getting maximum exposure by
running through a crowd.

____ "I haven't tried any hard drugs, but I have a feeling this is
probably better," said Goodwin, a 20-year-old who claims he never
did anything to attract so much attention to himself while growing
up in Lake Placid, N.Y.

____ Since he and the 18-year-old Whinery -- who cut his streaking
teeth in his hometown of Amarillo, Texas -- did their first nude
dash through a freshman dormitory in December, they've staged about
a dozen surprise streaks on the Williams campus.

____ Grudin's lecture was their first classroom appearance. They've
also hit the library, several parties and an a cappella concert. And
they're not without coconspirators.

____ The Springstreakers boast nine active members, all men except
for one, and they're always looking to recruit new ones.

____ Before bombing through Grudin's art history class, Goodwin
tried coaxing a few buddies into joining him and Whinery. There was
plenty of interest, but no takers.

____ Membership requires a willingness to shed clothing and an
ability to run quickly.

____ "A big part of our protocol is streaking while sober," Whinery
said. "Being naked is nothing to be embarrassed about, and if you
can only do it when you're drunk, then you can't do it with us.
That's something we pride ourselves on."

____ So far, the Springstreakers haven't raised the ire of campus
administrators.

____ "It hasn't impinged on our lives at all," Williams spokesman
Jim Kolesar said. "I don't know that they've had any effect at all."

____ Streaking on college campuses, of course, is nothing new. As
Grudin is quick to point out, she's seen plenty of streakers at
Williams since she started teaching there in 1971.

____ "Their fathers were doing this in the old days," she said. "If
they wanted to do something really funny, they'd get their fathers
to do it with them now."

____ Goodwin doesn't pretend there's anything high-minded about
running around in the buff, but if there is a social message he's
trying to send, it's that the human body is nothing to be ashamed
of.

____ "I feel the people we streak get something out of it," Goodwin
said. "The most obvious thing is that they see something that's
funny and blows their minds and will give them something to talk
about at reunion in 10 years. But it gets to deeper things like
people's ideas of sex and nudity and body image; things you might
discuss in a classroom but now have a reason to talk about in a
different setting."

____ So what does their audience think of the Springstreakers' body
images?

____ "I was saddened to see only their backsides," Grudin said. "But
they were nice backsides."

____