ALL I REALLY could see in the darkness was that they were naked. A few obviously were male; a few obviously were female. But that's about as detailed a view as I got of the streakers. I didn't think much of it, and continued on my way - until I saw a police officer emerge from the shadows next to Cabell Hall, and walk towards the group huddled around the Homer statue.
The streakers saw the policeman as well, and ran back to dress and flee before they were arrested, so everything turned out all right for them. But on the rest of my way home I thought about how the law had intruded to spoil their harmless fun. Streaking the Lawn shouldn't be a criminal offense.
Numerous University officials disagree -- several have gone on record recently to reiterate their disapproval of the decades-old tradition of running naked down the length of the Lawn. Likewise, University Police have arrested students in the past few months for streaking, which technically is an act of indecent exposure.
The problem with this opposition to streaking is that it comes from the wrong source. The arguments we hear about why streaking is wrong aren't based primarily on the act of streaking itself, but are related more to the fact that streaking routinely is associated with alcohol.
No, streaking isn't perfectly safe. Running naked and drunk down the hilly terrain of the Lawn can be dangerous. But it's not so much taking one's clothes off that makes it dangerous -- it's the alcohol that gets mixed with it.
I've seen several students fall down trying to run up the hills on the Lawn while streaking, one of whom took a nasty spill and lay sprawled in the grass, motionless for several minutes while friends huddled around. But I'll bet that the fall had more to do with being drunk than with being naked.
So, if student safety is the issue, why not arrest these students for public intoxication? The danger they're putting themselves in is a result of their drunkenness, not their lack of clothing. Arresting streakers for indecent exposure isn't going to make the community safer or protect students.
The justification for indecent exposure laws is that the general population needs to be able to go out in public without being exposed to nudity or lewd and indecent acts. But the spirit of the law doesn't demand the arrest of streakers, even if the letter of the law may.
People who are on the Lawn at midnight generally are mature enough to handle seeing a naked person. The nudity that streakers subject passersby to is not indecent or even sexual -- it's just nakedness. And it's nakedness from a substantial distance, at that. Indecent exposure laws don't need to be invoked to prevent this harmless nudity.
Others argue that streaking is unsafe because it might make sexual assaults more likely. But taking off one's clothes isn't a radar signal that magically attracts assailants for miles around. It's unlikely that seeing a naked person will entice someone to commit a sexual assault that he otherwise would not have committed.
This isn't to say that streakers are not vulnerable to sexual assault. But their vulnerability comes more from their intoxication than their nakedness. Being drunk is likely to make someone less in control of her body, less perceptive of her surroundings, slower to react, or more impaired in her judgment -- all things that would make her less able to avoid an attacker. Being naked doesn't cause these impediments to the same degree. Statistics on streaking are fairly hard to come by. There aren't numbers that compare the sexual assault rate on the Lawn to the sexual assault rate elsewhere on Grounds. But if we did have such data, it likely would show that a person is at a greater risk of sexual assault -- including date rape -- at an average party than while streaking the Lawn.
But even if streaking isn't that bad, what positive reason is there for it to be permitted? I would be foolish to try to justify streaking on rational grounds. It's not ordinarily an action based on reason and logic. It's a quirky tradition. In fact, it's a bit strange.
But its strangeness and uniqueness is its saving grace. Streaking the Lawn is something that has come to contribute to the definition of the University.
In 20 years, after we all have taken degrees and moved on, what we'll remember about this University are the little traditions, the tiny acts that give this place personality. The memories that we'll retain will be of things like streaking the Lawn.
Laws are made to protect us - from each other and from ourselves. But the application of indecent exposure laws to streaking does neither. Instead, it attempts to quash a tradition, a tradition that gives this University character. So University Police, leave the streakers alone.
(Bryan Maxwell is a Cavalier Daily associate editor.)
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