By the time students returned to Ann Arbor, the spontaneous solo streaker was all but passé. Then, in the first week of March, streakers seemed to be everywhere, with dozens of episodes reported every day, across the country.īut that was the week of U-M’s spring break, so Michigan students missed the crest of that wave. The national press began to notice in early February. The first streakers of 1974 appeared at Florida State University in January, followed by imitators in Texas, Washington state, and Maryland. (See “Panty Raid, 1952”.) But this time it was late to the race. More than 20 years earlier, Michigan had set the trend in such affairs. Indeed, streaking struck some as an uproarious effort to cast off the grim preoccupations of the Vietnam/Watergate years. campuses in that year when Richard Nixon’s presidency was spiraling down toward impeachment.
Lee, as president of Washington College (later Washington and Lee), was said to have given his blessing to naked runs as a rite of passage.īut the country had never seen public nudity like the phenomenon that overtook U.S. college campuses dates back at least to the 19th century, when Robert E. The streakers of 1974 were hardly the first American students to run through public spaces with no clothes on.
