This Harvard Ritual Is One Of The Weirdest College Traditions
Harvard graduates have been dangling their academic qualifications in front of everyone since the college was founded, but it's not clear when literal pantslessness became common practice.
The Crimson reports that Harvard students have been racing in the buff since about 1995. Before that, the event was more like what it sounds like: students, under the stress of their final exam preparations, would all stick their heads through the window and scream at the stroke of midnight.
But streaking has a long tradition in the Ivy League schools. Forget the 1970s images of grinning, mustachioed idiots crashing the Oscars or invading a football pitch: In 1785, as a 15-year-old undergraduate, Charles Adams, son of the second American president, was disciplined for running naked across the Harvard Yard with a group of his intoxicated friends (via PBS).
Well, kids will be kids and Harvard will be Harvard. In 2014, when Black Lives Matter protesters camped in Harvard Yard, the nude mob ran counterclockwise rather than cancel the run, apparently for the first time in 20 years. And while the COVID-19 pandemic forced a brief halt in the custom, have no fear — as of midnight on December 10, 2021, the runners are back and nuder than ever, ready to answer tradition's call.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunCDj25vbGlfqbWqv4yhmKuukaexbr7IrayapF2ewG67zZ5kqJ5dqbWmedaeoKuclajBbq%2FOpaOen5ViwbOtw6KroqeeqHw%3D