It's just after midnight and I'm sitting here in the main stacks of Doe Library at UC Berkeley working on a paper. Fall finals are this week and the library is open 24 hours a day for tense students cramming to prepare for their examinations.

About ten minutes ago the aisles of the this enormous underground library started filling up with students and a low and constant chatter started to grow in this usually uptight "shhhh!" environment. I hardly noticed since I had my earplugs in.

Suddenly people started shouting and clapping, and then I saw a parade of dozens of naked students jog by while everyone cheered. I settled back to my paper and just a few minutes later the streakers ascended the stairs in front of the table at which I am working, passing by again after completing their lap of each floor. A minute later the last straggler danced past, more likely an exhibitionist than unable to keep up.

It's nice to relieve some stress around finals, and ironically I was just working on Rousseau's man in the state of nature. Those people looked just as I imagined Rousseau's natural man, except they were wearing running shoes.
  ¶ 12/16/2004 12:08:00 AM