The once-spontaneous UCLA student tradition of running around campus clad only in underwear during the Wednesday of Finals Week has been changed again by campus administrators who, let's face it, probably wish the whole embarrassing spectacle could just be erased from the collective student consciousness and substituted with some good, old-fashioned weeping, or whatever it was students used to do to relieve academic stress.
The Undie Run, set for this Wednesday night, was outlined with a map of the route by the Daily Bruin student newspaper this week. Runners will still start at Gayley Avenue and Strathmore Drive as they have in the past, but rather than bounding up Bruin Walk to the fountain outside Royce Hall, they will now conclude their streak on an intramural field to the west of there.
The fountain had been a matter of some concern at past runs as dozens of participants took post-run dips, risking not only slip-and-fall injuries, but we can probably guess at a need for campus-wide tetanus inoculations. Fountain water. Enough said.
None of the changes, however, deal with some of the other sticking points, such as how to prevent non-student participation, or how to police the long suspected use of alcohol by some of these amateur athletes. No easy answer comes to mind. First off, underwear lacks the essential pocket to hold a student's identification card. And, as for the alcohol thing ... THEY'RE RUNNING IN THEIR UNDERWEAR.
