Pajama Parade
In July 1862, Professor Jonathan Pearson described in his diary the administration’s reaction to a precursor of "streaking:"
Actg. Pres. Hickok called a Faculty meeting this evening to discuss a disgraceful exhibition made last evening by 8 or 10 students who showed themselves in front of college about 1 o’clock in their shirts alone. They called themselves the "shirt-tail brigade" and after a series of silly performances and noise retired. So indecent an exhibition it was thought should be noticed and if possible stopped.
Students held midnight "pajama parades" through Schenectady in April and October of 1914; the practice returned in the fall of 1950, supposedly with the purpose of depriving the visiting team of sleep by serenading them outside the Van Curler Hotel before the season’s first football game. Whether or not they accomplished this purpose, the freshman marchers did, according to reports, accidentally trample an elderly couple outside Proctor’s Theatre and damage a car. Subsequent pajama parades were more closely supervised by upperclassmen, who forced freshmen to participate. In 1955 the College tried to divert the custom into "useful instead of destructive channels" by renaming it the Pajama Drive and providing it with two bands and a motorcade, which was to include the Mayor. That parade was rained out, and the following year it became the custom for the paraders to block a major intersection by sitting down in the street. The College tried unsuccessfully to prevent a repetition in 1957, and in 1958 two freshmen were arrested for sitting down in the street; no further pajama parades were held.
Real streakers—naked runners who "streak" through a public area—appeared nationally about 1973 and at Union a little later. The fad returned to Union in the 1990s in the form of a nocturnal lap around the Nott Memorial known as the "Naked Nott Run."
Condensed from Wayne Somers, compiler and editor, Encyclopedia of Union College History (Schenectady: Union College Press, 2003), page 710.
Image courtesy of Union College, Schaffer Library Special Collections and Archives, Photograph Collection