Student participants in this year’s Senior Streak were disturbed last night to see that a large contingent of senior faculty had turned out for the event. Interspersed among the disrobed ranks of the Lawrence senior class was a delegation of retired and retiring Lawrence professors. According to a faculty source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, a rumor had spread among the elderly professors leading them to believe that seniors “of all kinds” were welcome this year.
A number of students in the crowd reacted with horror to the sight of their beloved elder instructors in the buff, but the overwhelming sentiment on Main Hall Green last night was one of affirmation. “I’ve been going to Professor Chaney’s salon for years, but I’ve never felt closer to him than when I saw him doing cartwheels au naturale past the steps of Main Hall,” remarked senior Harry Harald Harrison, who also participated in the event. Reuben Sorenson, standing nearby, disagreed. “I’m all for frolicking across campus in your birthday suit, but not when your birthday was like 90 years ago.”
Campus security was more concerned with the professors’ drunken behavior than with their nudity. Bertrand Goldgar was spotted consuming large amounts of “spiked Metamucil.” One security guard discovered Professor Boardman urinating random circle and oval patterns on the sidewalk in front of Buchanan-Kiewit Recreation Center. Peter Fritzell had to be hospitalized after falling off the wall of Seeley G. Mudd library, which he was attempting to scale. He apparently lost his grip while trying to add scare quotes to emphasize the mantra he had been shouting throughout the night, “I have taken off my clothing – I have taken off ‘my clothing’ – NOT IN THAT SENTENCE!!”
President Richard J. Warch’s orations were somewhat more eloquent than usual, despite his severe intoxication, and, of course, his “as-yet-unparallelled unapparelled state.” A large crowd of students in various degrees of undress gathered around the President as he robustly entreated them to follow his example in exploring the “bare backside of liberal learning.”
“We have gathered here,” proclaimed Warch, “all of us together, ‘in the altogether,’ as we used to say at Yale, to divest and dismantle ourselves from the heavy accoutrements with which the taxing duties of the campus business can burden us.” The President paused to adjust the impressive array of medallions spread in uncharacteristic disarray across his otherwise bare chest, and then continued. “It is fitting that we thus engage our bodies as well as our intellects in what would otherwise be an all too stiff-colored academic environment. As you can see, we have stripped the liberal arts experience down to its bare essentials.”
At this point Warch’s address was interrupted by the defiant cry of a mud-smeared and surprisingly tatooed Chaney, who streaked through the crowd with arms flung heavenward, shouting, “Behold the glory that was my body!”
Students on the east end of campus were largely spared appearances of the nude pedagogues. The warning cry went up at about 12:28 a.m., when members of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity warned that they had heard the ominous whirr of the approaching “Guch-mobile,” heralding the arrival of an unclad Mari Taniguchi.
Some other faculty were disappointed to have been left out of the undraped festivities. A pouty Bob Levy complained, “I’m retiring next year, and I thought I would have heard, but I guess I must be out of the loop. Maybe next year I can lead the naked marching band.