I Went to the Wrong School...

...or at the wrong time, methinks. I saw this fine example of truly dedicated participatory journalism (I'll bet George Plimpton was sad he didn't get a chance to do this!) on Friday, but didn't have the chance to write up a post on it until now. Sam Alipour definitely took one for the team when he volunteered for that assignment. What the Undie Run at UCLA (and check out the pic of the students getting ready for their run below) has to do with the "Worldwide Leader in Sports," or sports of any kind, I have no idea. But it is a fun click-through, so it serves its purpose.


















At Ohio State, they have a tradition of jumping in Mirror Lake on the night before the Michigan football game, which is always the last game of the season, so it happens in late November. Given that the OSU students are mixing water and cold air, I think the UCLA students have the better idea. A picture of the OSU students getting ready to brave the frigid water is below.



















What's funny is that I did attend Ohio State (sorry, THE Ohio State University) for one year immediately following high school. Honestly, I have no recollection of students doing their dive into Mirror Lake. Either my friends and/or sister (who was a junior while I was a freshman) didn't clue me in on the tradition, or it is more recent in nature, like the UCLA Undie Run.

Actually, the Wikipedia entry for OSU Buckeye Football says that the tradition of jumping in before the Michigan game is more recent, as of 1990.* I missed it by a single year! Aaarrrgh!!

* You have to scroll down to the section on "Buckeye Football Traditions" and look for those associated with Michigan Week.

Which is not all that different from the morphing of the UCLA tradition from a simple Midnight Scream during finals week into its current form of college-age coeds running around in their underwear. Heck, at the Big Blue Womb (AKA The Zoo, AKA the Fishbowl, AKA Sister Mary Francis' Small Colorado Technical School for Wayward Boys and Girls), we had a long-standing tradition of performing a Midnight Scream during all finals weeks. Everyone would get their loudest stereos out, blast the most obnoxious audio they could find, and scream at the top of their lungs just to let off a little steam during finals. And then we'd go into Mitchell Hall for "scooby snacks", which were a complete lifesaver during finals!!!

I kinda doubt that cadets at USAFA morphed their Midnight Scream tradition into something more risque, mostly because it does get cold in Colorado in December. Oh, and there's a grand total of, what? About 12% of the entire student body is female? And many of the women who are there, you probably don't want to see in their undies. Which is completely unfair to those women, but true nonetheless.

So, any kind of underwear run or jump in the reflecting pool found in the Air Gardens (pic below) would be a total sausage fest, and not many guys at the Zoo will go for that. I'd be surprised to hear any different.