Streaking
Editorial written by Pat Crawford for the Fountainhead. It appeared in the 1975 Buccaneer with the photograph.
Citation for this article is: Crawford, Pat. "Editorial," Fountainhead, March 7, 1974.
Those of us who have been at ECU since the great boycott/visitation marches/Fountainhead obscenity case of 1970-71 seem to have been trhough just about everything by now. We've seen teh rise of the student movement, the immediate decline of the same, and now: streaking.
The inclusion of streaking along with student politics may seem inappropriate at first.However, ECU's student issues have never stemmed from earth-shaking things; the war in Vietnam caused only token interest, but visitation nearly had the campus in shards. ECU has always been what majro campuses have only now become a private-interest campus.We are, in short, interested in our local cosmos.
Some observers claim that streaking at ECU is indicative of a great human/sexual awakening; the liberation of the student, and see tremendous social significance in nude running. A less profound thought is that streaking beats sitting around the Rat or the Crow's Nest, and is less trite than yet another panty raid. This editor can't agree fully with the "social significance" argument; however, when you consider the progress made at ECU in general terms, streaking must fit in somewhere.
Four years ago getting visitation back was a vision of sorts, with students-versus-the Board of Trustees, and a march down Fifth Street -- just to have co-ed visitation from 12 to 12.Today visitation is uniform with one co-ed dorm and promise of a second.Four years ago this newspaper was under fire for printing obsenities, with students cheering on one side and administration and Greenville citizens writhing on the other. This year, the Buccaneer came out with at least half a dozen items which were declared either objectionable or obscene by critics.Instead of re-establishing the old students-administration rift, everyone established his or her own view of the matter. Most people simply said, "So what else is new?" and went about their business.
There have been changes in four years; we've seen a developing maturity in ECU students, or at least in student attitudes.And even the crowds who gather to watch streakers, or who participate in streaking, don't have the semi-obscene nature of the old panty-raiders.There's shouting, all right, and kidding around, but it's a celebration of sorts -- no one's there just to stare or watch bodies.As for nudity -- "So what else is new?"; but as a celebration of being alive, and of feeling secure enough and confident enough in living to streak and of bringing in Spring with something more natural than a panty raid or a three-day hangover, you can't beat streaking.
No, streaking doesn't signify any great new social order.It's basically a friendly sort of thing, rather brotherly-sisterly, and marks for all its convivial madness, another small change at ECU, from the expected to the human.At least today, before it's hit the stage of triteness, nothing could be less indecent than streaking.
