A matter of grave importance faces our community. It is the alarming decline of streaking as the pastime of American college students. While visiting my girlfriend at the University of Pennsylvania last weekend I discovered that, despite the existence of a perfectly good “streaking quad,” eight out of ten Penn students that I surveyed said they will not streak by the time they graduate.

In a related survey seven out of ten Penn students are giant wonks.

Though streaking still stands at the heart of a Jeffersonian education, one cannot help but look at the numbers and fear that anti-streaking sentiment soon will spread beyond the campuses of a few backwards institutions and infect even our beloved University.

Distressed by my experiences with the students at Penn, I further investigated the streaking issue in a discussion with a security guard at the Upper Quad Gate. His insight proved invaluable in discovering the roots of widespread aversion to public nudity among the student body.

A-J: So, I’ve noticed that not many people like to streak here.

Hank “Gatekeeper” Bryant eating a Philly Cheesesteak and doing other things that Philadelphians do: Yup.

A: With all your expertise in keeping gates, do you have a guess as to why this is?

H: Probably because people don’t want me to see them naked. (weird grin)

A: Ah … Hey, can I have a bite of your cheesesteak?

H: No.

And that’s why Philadelphia is the City of Not Sharing.

Admittedly, intense security procedures hinder students’ ability to streak the quad successfully. In order to enter, they must swipe their ID cards and enter the last four digits of their social security number. Upon the correct insertion of their code, two glass plates swing open and allow access to one student at a time. Streaking into and across the quad would thus prove quite impossible, unless one were willing to proceed nude through security.

With Hank standing there.

Streaker: (naked) Oh shoot, my card isn’t swiping correctly.

Hank: (weird grin)

S: Can you open the gate for me?

H: (weird grin, reaches for a Philly Cheesesteak)

Risks exist even for those willing to attempt an “out of quad” streak. On exiting, the glass gates swing open by means of motion detector.

Sometimes these motion detectors do not operate correctly. Like when you go through them too quickly. Like you would be if you were running through the quad. Now imagine running into these glass gates.

Naked.

Nevertheless, students rarely even reach the stage where they are conscious of the risks, preferring instead to allow their natural streaking instincts to go unexplored. Back at the dorms, upon hearing my cries of “Hey everyone, who wants to go streak the quad?” several studying Wharton students poked their heads out of their rooms and actually hissed at me.

I could only pity them. And stick my tongue out. Wahoo Wa!

The ride back to Charlottesville gave me time to turn the issue over in my head (incidentally, getting on an Amtrak train involved fewer security measures than getting into the quad. I could have been carrying a rocket launcher and would still have gotten on successfully).

I took a seat near the window and slumped down as the train began to pull away from Philly. Maybe we at U.Va. are the ones who have it all wrong. Maybe streaking the Lawn isn’t worth the planning, the risk and the effort. The glory imagined. The stories not worth telling. The kiss of wet dew against bare feet felt as well fully clothed as naked.

Lulled into slumber by the soporific rocking of the train, I dreamt.

I was walking across the Lawn on a spring night when all the sudden Thomas Jefferson came to me and said, “Dedicate one night a week to public nudity, for willingness to bare one’s flesh is akin to willingness to bare one’s soul. Barbeque potato wagon tissue freight train.”

I awoke to the conductor shaking me awake at the Charlottesville station and I nearly hugged her with delight. I was home again in Virginia, where streaking takes its rightful place among the most important rites of passage of all would-be scholars. After all, what better way exists to remember, as James Hay put it, “the majesty of the colonnades, and the dream of your youth” than from the frantic flailing perspective of a buck naked college student who wants nothing more than to get back to the Rotunda, clothe, and safety.

Jefferson came to me with the message that I now bring to you. Go. Streak. Enjoy it while you can. Tell the entire community of undergraduate learners in this great nation that here at U.Va. we are indeed going streaking. Barbeque potato wagon tissue freight train.