Boston.com - For decades, bright leaders of tomorrow at Tufts University have found respite from their high-minded pursuits in the noblest of college traditions: streaking around the quad in a madcap dash through a cold December night.  But to the chagrin of nudist revelers everywhere, college administrators have called a stop to the alcohol-fueled antics, saying the annual student celebration has gone too far.In a sharply worded column published in yesterday’s Tufts Daily, university president Lawrence Bacow said the Naked Quad Run has become an increasingly unruly and dangerous event that puts students’ lives at risk.“Given that we can no longer manage the run, we cannot allow this ‘tradition’ to continue,’’ Bacow wrote in the student newspaper. “Even if I did not act now, NQR would end some day. The only question is whether a student has to die first. We cannot allow this to happen.’’ This December, the college said, was a particular nightmare. A dozen students were hospitalized after the event, two with blood alcohol levels over 0.3 percent, more than three times the legal limit for adult drivers (most undergraduates are below the legal drinking age). Drunk students who went to a local hospital to check on a friend disrupted the emergency room, Bacow said, and another student was arrested in a confrontation with police.As far back as 2002, Bacow frowned on the Naked Quad Run, chiding students for drunken escapades that left the campus littered with broken bottles. “The combination of consumption of alcohol with a mad dash through an icy, hilly campus at night cannot continue,’’ he wrote students at the time. “I also heard reports of students being groped while running, and other examples of poor and disrespectful behavior. Tufts is better than this.’’ Bacow had wanted to end the event at the time, but students and alumni persuaded him otherwise. Instead, the college wound up sanctioning the run in an effort to make it safer, erecting barriers between spectators and runners, salting and sanding the course, and providing police details.


First things first.  Pretty sure Tufts copied this from the Naked Mile at Michigan which was apparently cancelled the year after I graduated in 2000, but that’s not the point of this blog.   This dude Lawrence Bacow is everything wrong with America and our educational system today.    He tried to cancel this thing 10 years ago when he was hired because he didn’t like the sounds of it.   He said it was too dangerous.  People would die, blah, blah, blah.   A decade later no deaths.  No sustained injuries.  Nothing.   A couple college kids going to the ER with alcohol poisoning which I’m sure doesn’t happen any other weekend of the year except during the Naked Run right?   Give me a break.   Nothing has happened.    I mean if you’re going to cancel events based on the premise that somebody will eventually die why don’t you stick the entire campus in a bubble and put them in diapers and coddle their asses until they graduate.   That will prepare people for the real world.

The bottom line is this.  Educators are full of shit.   They are most self righteous windbags on the planet.   They spend 30 years getting all sorts of useless degrees and never spend a day in the real world.   The only thing kids learn at college is how to live on their own and make decisions for themselves.   Any school that tries to micromanage their students is only hurting themselves and should be stoned to death.    Stop telling kids what they can and can’t do because in one year Daddy won’t be around anymore and then what?   Brian Shapiro isn’t walking through that door and if he did he’d be old and grey.