NOTE ON STUDENTS' REACTIONS TO "STREAKERS" AND "STREAKING

The process by which an act becomes defined as "deviant" has been the subject of numerous commentaries. Kitsuse (2 ) has summarized: "Forms of behavior per se do not differentiate deviants; it is the responses of the conventional and conforming members of society who identify and interpret behavior as deviant which sociologically transforms people into deviants" (p. 248). During spring 1974 the phenomenon of "streaking" (running nude in public) spread across at least 123 colleges in the Uniied States (1 ) . Was streaking considered "deviant" behavior? To answer that question, as it applied to one college population, a questionnaire was administered to a 1 % random sample of 212 of Louisiana State Universiry undergraduate students immediately following a March 1974 episode of streaking on that campus. The sample was drawn from the student directory; none of the respondents had been streakers but all were aware of or had observed the episode. Only 9 % of the respondents labeled the streakers as "deviant" or as similarly negative types (exhibitionists, vulgar persons, perverts, etc.). The rest of the respondents characterized streakers in such terms as "funseekers," "faddists," "bored people looking for diver!jon," "people liking attention," "ordinary people with nothing else to do," "carefree, "uninhibif~d." Over 80% of the respondents felt that streaking had taken place because of "fad, "tensjon release," "springtime fun," "the search for novelty," or "an escape from exam pressure. Of 84 hypotheses concerning the relation of social variables (socio-economic status, sex, age, religion, major, grade point average, political orientation, place of birth, degree of authoritarianism) to judgments concerning streaking, only three relationships attained statistical significance (males, respondents whose fathers had higher incomes, and respondents with higher grade point averages tended more often to label streakers as "ordinary" peo le). strezing was not seen as deviant behavior, nor streakers as deviant by nearly all of the respondents. Rather, streaking was assessed to be a diversion or fad. Sociologically defined, a fad is "an exceptional preoccupation with a single viewpoint, object of interest, or a single line of behavior, and is of limited duration. Fads arise unpredictably, seem somewhat bizarre, and are concerned with items of culture, often material or linguistic, which seem superficial, ornamental, and generally harmless" (3, p. 207 ) . Streaking, therefore, takes its place alongside such other historical fads as gold-fish swallowing, booth stuffing, Volkswagen stuffing, bath-tub racing, wheeled-bed racing, panty raiipt:: The near absence of the influence of social background influences on the attitudes of respondents toward streaking supports the argument for the heterogeneity of persons responding similarly to episodes of fadism. Attitudes toward fads can be relatively independent of those influences, keyed primarily by the thrill of the event, the perceived innocuousness of the event, and the need for or acceptance of diversion. Persons in populations other than college students might, of course, have seen streaking less as a fad and more as a "deviant" act.