College Streaking - Part 42

 Tufts Naked Quad Run

Tufts University is a private university in Medford, Massachusetts, near Boston.  For decades, one of Tufts' traditions was the Naked Quad Run (NQR), which took place on the first night of the fall semester reading period in December.

Students ran from the back door of West Hall, around the Res (Residential) Quad, and returned to West.

The run is said to have begun in 1975, when male students streaked around the quad to protest plans to make Tufts housing coed.  Females began running in 1987.

In 2002, Tufts President Larry Bacow sent out an email saying, "The combination of consumption of alcohol with a mad dash through an icy, hilly campus at night cannot continue."

But it did continue.  There was such an outcry from students and alumni who loved the event that the administration backed down, eventually deciding to officially sponsor it under the name Nighttime Quad Reception (NQR).  But the name didn't fool anyone.  It was still the Naked Quad Run.

Nine years later, in 2011, President Bacow, who still didn't like the run, finally banned it.

Another factor leading to the event's demise was unwanted publicity.  The web site coccozella.com posted hundreds of photos of student runners, including most of the photos above.

And in January, 2008, the Somerville Journal, a local town newspaper, posted a video of the previous month's 2007 Naked Quad Run on YouTube, to the dismay of some students, although the video view was from behind the runners, so no frontal nudity was shown.  The video was quite long.  Above is a portion of it that I have edited down to less than a minute, but it gives an idea of how many students participated – hundreds and hundreds.