Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona
In March, 1974, the college streaking craze spread across the country. These were not streakers at sporting events. (That's a whole different subject, and maybe we'll feature some of those streakers later.) In the college streaking craze, students streaked on campus or on the streets of their college towns.
I have photos of the 1974 college streaking epidemic from 45 different states plus three Canadian provinces. We'll start with Alabama, Arkansas, and Arizona.
Auburn University, Alabama, streakers in a truck.
An Auburn streaker.
The 1974 edition of the Glomerata, Auburn's yearbook, documented some of the streakers.
These are students at Hendrix College, Arkansas, streaking through the Brick Pit in March, 1974.
And these are students at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
4 comments:
Even though there were a couple females, this was a fun posting.
I wasn't around in 1974 so I am curious what led to the streaking phenomenon that year. And why it ended. Do you know what provoked this delightful activity?
Nick
Like any fad, it’s a mystery why streaking suddenly became popular. Why was swallowing goldfish a fad in 1939? Why was cramming as many students as possible into a phone booth a fad in 1959? Why was planking a fad in 2011?
Sporadic solo streaking has happened for centuries, but for some reason mass streaking became a fad among college students, starting with a few cases in the fall of 1973 that got wide publicity, pausing over the winter, and then starting up again when things warmed up in February in the South, and peaking across the nation in March, 1974. It then suddenly died out, like all fads do, but to this day some colleges maintain a tradition of a naked run, like the Harvard “primal scream” before final exams, which involves streaking around Harvard Yard.
Thanks for your answer. I've always wondered about that era. My high school guidance counselor didn't tell me about the Harvard Yard streaking. If she had, I might have studied harder in high school.
Nick
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