Two Streakers Disrupt Mass. College Class

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Professor Eva Grudin was about to lead her students into a discussion of whether an abstract painting was meant to invoke a certain part of the male anatomy when her class was interrupted by the real thing.

With no warning, two naked students barged into her Williams College lecture hall, struck a quick pose for the 150 students there, and ran out.

Nothing abstract here. Grudin and her students had just been streaked.

But this was no one-time prank by some drunken college students. It was yet another performance by two members of the Springstreakers, the latest unofficial student activity club at this elite liberal arts college.

"It's hard to get your bearings back and continue with your lecture after that," said Grudin, who let out a shriek that was followed by her students' laughter, then applause when the streakers stole everyone's attention from a slide projection of Robert Motherwell's vaguely phallic depiction of a bull.

With two weeks before the end of final exams, Grudin and many of the students on the prim 2,000-student campus in the Berkshires say the Springstreakers are offering just the kind of stress relief that so many need right now.

"It's amazing that they do this," said Mon Thach, a freshman who was streaked in Grudin's art history class late last week. "It was so funny, and everyone needs a good laugh like that at the end of the semester."