Stuff Dartmouth Kids Like: It’s Getting Hot In Here (So Take Off All Your Clothes)

Being naked is hardly some­thing unique to Dart­mouth. Many schools have tra­di­tions that call for stu­dents to streak classes or streak the li­brary dur­ing fi­nals. But it’s al­ways been sur­pris­ing to me that so many of Dart­mouth’s tra­di­tions, and ba­si­cally all of our most well-known ones, in­volve stu­dents in var­i­ous states of un­dress. Streak­ing ob­vi­ously re­quires you to be naked, as do the Led­yard and Blue Light Chal­lenges. The Seven and the Decade could the­o­ret­i­cally be done with your clothes on, but you’re prob­a­bly going to be mostly naked for those, too.

One of the first streak­ing-re­lated in­ci­dents at Dart­mouth was not a tra­di­tion in and of it­self, but it def­i­nitely dis­rupted one — Green Key week­end. A vis­it­ing girl, Lulu Mc­woosh, bi­cy­cled around cam­pus naked and got Green Key can­celed. Dur­ing fu­ture Green Keys, vis­it­ing fe­males would ap­par­ently play naked golf with Dart­mouth men, a tra­di­tion known as “Mid­night Golf.” And streak­ing naked isn’t just for the lit­tle peo­ple — Jef­frey Im­melt ’78, the cur­rent CEO of Gen­eral Elec­tric, stole a Christ­mas tree for his room in South Fay­er­weather from the Hanover Inn while run­ning around cam­pus naked. You go, Jeff!

So yes, we have a long and glo­ri­ous his­tory of being naked. Al­most every­one who has ex­pe­ri­enced sopho­more sum­mer has a story of that time 20 of their friends got drunk and de­cided it was a great night for the Led­yard Chal­lenge. The Dart­mouth In­de­pen­dent called streak­ing a “vir­tual pre­req­ui­site for grad­u­at­ing from the Col­lege.”

I don’t know what it is about Dart­mouth that makes us love being naked so much. I mean, shouldn’t the fear of get­ting poi­son ivy in our pri­vate bits stop us from run­ning around in the woods? I think it’s just be­cause Dart­mouth loves to get weird. We take shots at 11 p.m. the night be­fore our fi­nals, have sex in re­ally in­ap­pro­pri­ate places, drive (hope­fully not drunk) to truck-stop din­ers at four in the morn­ing, wear weird hats and chil­dren’s tutus and call it flair — why shouldn’t we get naked too?

In case you’re won­der­ing, I’ll be doing the Led­yard Chal­lenge this sum­mer. I can’t re­sist such a hal­lowed tra­di­tion. And if I’m going to get caught, please let it be by Safety and Se­cu­rity. I re­ally don’t need my fu­ture em­ploy­ers to see that on my record.