On Running Naked in Libraries
Jermaine Stewart once said, “We don’t have to take our clothes off to have a good time.”
He was wrong.
Each semester during the week before Finals- ironically called “Dead Eeek” by staff and students, despite it being one of the most stressful periods in a person’s lifetime— there was a Naked Run. It was organized by one of the co-ops (hippie versions of frats in my mind, though I’m sure the co-ops wouldn’t take kindly to the description). The weeks before and of Finals at UC Berkeley were the epitome of stress. For many classes, the final might be up to 40% of one’s overall grade, and if Berkeley students took partying seriously, their very lives depended on grades. The Naked Run served as a sort of reprieve.
In order to give an accurate depiction of the Naked Run I fear I must first bore you with the layout of the Berkeley campus libraries. There are a lot of them, but the three primary ones are clustered around Memorial Glade, a large grassy congregation site at the center of campus. Doe Library is arguably the most beautiful building at the school. It’s a huge Colonial style building with tall, white columns and long vertical windows. The thatched roof holds huge sun lights that deem lamps unnecessary in the second story grand hall until nightfall. Long oak tables stretch the length of the hall and overlook the Glade, giving students a beautiful view even while they torturously cram their brains at all hours. On the first floor a cozy reading room- in which all technology is strictly banned- filled with plush velvet chairs and oil paintings decorating the walls was always full of silent and solemn students returning to the archaic form of studying by book. The building can only be described as regal.
Diagonally across the Glade from Doe is Moffitt Library, a far less charming place to study, but which does have access to rows of computers and a popular cafe. You might think that the two are totally separate and unconnected buildings, but that is only because you don’t yet know about Berkeley’s most expansive library, the Main Stacks. Located beneath ground, Main Stacks houses well over 2 million volumes of UC Berkeley’s never ending research collection. It is directly beneath Doe Library and is accessed via a massive spiral staircase, descending four levels deep into the Earth. Each of these levels spans the size of two football fields and is filled with row upon row of sliding bookshelves. The shelves can be pushed together or slid apart so as to most efficiently use the space to hold as many books as physically possible. One must be very careful to check between the shelves for live bodies before sliding them together. Dispersed throughout the shelves are hundreds of tables and nooks and small private rooms for studying, in addition to computers for printing papers and looking up books (an exhausting process in and of itself).
During the weeks of Dead Week and finals, these hundreds upon hundreds of study spots in the Main Stacks were the most valuable real estate in the whole San Francisco Bay Area. Students would stalk the halls of the Stacks seeking an open seat at a table, and if you were lucky enough to find one, you mustn’t ever give it up. I personally witnessed people camping out at these spots for days, surrounded by piles of books, blankets, and bottles of Adderall. While it was of course entirely against all library rules, people would bring hot plates to make quick meals of Ramen at 4 in the morning without having to vacate their spots. Time lost all meaning. Suffice to say, the Main Stacks were poppin’.
What is important to understand is that while Doe Library is the main entrance to get down to the Stacks, it is not the only entrance. There is also an underground tunnel that leads from one of the lower levels of Moffitt Library into the Stacks. The three central libraries are therefore all connected under the Glade, and it is because of this tunnel that the Naked Runners are able to make a large loop through the three libraries.
The Naked Run always occurred one night of Dead Week, but no one ever knew exactly when until a few hours before the fact. As I mentioned, it was planned by one of the many Co-ops, who would release the meeting time into the ether the day of the event. To know about the Run, a person needed an in. A friend of a friend of a friend in the Co-op, for instance. I had my connections, of course.
The spontaneous nature of the event was necessary for a number of reasons. For one, strictly speaking, I don’t think public nudity was technically legal on campus, though don’t quote me on that. It certainly wasn’t unheard of and I don’t think you could find many people who would much care either which way, but I would assume that public indecency may have been a misdemeanor?
The second reason is that the Naked Run would not work if it got too big. A few hundred people could fit into the library’s corridors and run around for 15 to 20 minutes without chaos ensuing. Increase that number to a few thousand, and Hell breaks loose.
Thirdly, and most importantly, is that the Naked Run was in many ways a sacred event meant to be respected and taken, in some sense of the word, seriously. It only worked because because people didn’t show up wasted. If you knew days in advanced when the Run would take place, people would plan accordingly and take the evening off from studying to pre-game and make a whole party night of it. As it was, however, you might find out halfway through cramming for a History exam that the Naked Run would be happening in the next two hours. Rather than a rager, it was therefore a brief study break.
This is important because it is easy and meaningless to get naked in public when you are drunk. Stripping down in a massive group of people stone-cold sober is a completely different phenomenon. But I believe that doing this taught me one of the most important lessons I learned in my years at college. This is that when everyone is naked, no one is naked. Stripping down in a crowded corridor of hundreds of other naked people is not sexy and it is not embarrassing. It is shockingly and refreshingly one of the most entirely natural experiences I’ve had. I didn’t find myself staring at boobs and dicks, but I didn’t avert my eyes either. I felt no need to cross my arms or crouch down. It was kind of like being in a crowded group of clothed people except that is was much less colorful and everyone was a little giddy.
We gathered in the staircases leading to the Moffitt corridor. We took careful note of precisely which level and location we had ditched our clothes at. A few people left undergarments on if that felt more comfortable to them, women on their periods, etc., but the vast majority of the crowd was bare flesh. And then the people in front of you would slowly start moving forward toward the entrance to the underground hallway and you’d start to pick up pace and were soon jogging barefoot in a crowd of people through a dark corridor until you suddenly reached the doorway to the Main Stacks and burst into a bright room full of cheering students flashing camera phones and reaching out to give high fives. We would run up the spiraling staircase, fueled by pure adrenaline, waving to the crowds that packed every level of the Stacks and eventually we would reach Doe Library. We sprinted out the great French doors and down the entrance stairs, across the glade (painfully cold in the Fall Semester to the point where your toes would get numb and your nipples sore), and back into Moffitt Library to the stairway where you prayed that if there was a God, your clothes would be where you remembered leaving them.
One year campus police were called to Moffit and were waiting for the runners as we returned to the building. This was hilarious because there was really no point. The run was over. We were going to get our clothes, go back to our dorms and apartments and cafes and continue studying for finals. What were they going to do? Arrest hundreds of peaceful naked 20 year olds with no identification on them and cram them into a few jail cells? We would have loved it! A naked spin on Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement of the ‘60s.
No, the officers or security guards, however they were classified, ordered us to go put our clothes on, which was of course already the plan.
Another year my face ended up on the cover of the Daily Cal. It was one of my proudest moments. I was far back enough in the crowd of nudists that my body was hidden from the camera, so I even sent it to my parents with my face circled so that they could add it to that box of my accomplishments they kept in storage, along with my Participation ribbons from children’s sports teams and pictures of my handprint turned into a turkey, etc.
For me the significance of the experience did not lie in learning to feel comfortable in my body. I’ve always been a bit of an exhibitionist. Taking my clothes off is in my nature. The thing that made an impression every semester was the unity in embracing something as a group that individually could not have worked. Trying new and uncomfortable things with strangers creates instant bonds. Allowing yourself to be exposed and vulnerable with others creates an unmatchable trust, particularly when the other people are making themselves vulnerable too. The excitement and endorphins and pride that come from running around with your body hanging out and lots of bodies hanging out and everyone cheering about it creates a certain type of high that I don’t believe I’ll ever feel again. It’s very raw.
And then of course it’s over, and you put your clothes back on and return to the terrifying reality that is Dead Week, knowing that your professors are going to kick your ass in the upcoming days. But it’s worth it because you’ve just had a certain type of rush that no amount of Adderall could ever provide. You’ve streaked in a library. You OWN academia. Mic drop.
