Twenty-five degrees fahrenheit, a slight easterly breeze, and the season’s first snow: auspicious conditions for a nude lap. With gates agape, Harvard Yard welcomed hundreds of students and dozens of voyeurs for “Primal Scream.” This bi-annual tradition originated in the 1960s as a gathering at the end of reading week in which repressed Harvard students left the confines of the library to literally scream. In the ’70s, a few maverick streakers transformed the scream into a naked lap around the Yard.
To begin our exploration of the modern lap, we spoke to the man guarding Dexter Gate, the main gate to the Yard. Over the past year, gates were closed beginning at 5 pm for COVID-19 related reasons, with each of the five remaining open gates guarded by a member of the Harvard Securitas team. No matter the temperature or weather conditions, a Securitas member demanded your credentials upon entrance. However, a week after the discovery of the Omicron variant, the gates to veritas were left wide open. The security detail sat inside a guardhouse set apart from the path behind two wooden doors with cloudy glass panels. We made eye contact with the guard and he emerged from his light and warmth into the chilled air. He glanced furtively to the side as we started with “Hi sir, do you know what tonight is?”
“It’s Primal Scream,” he responded tentatively.
“Are you excited, are you going to watch?”
“No. Two years ago I witnessed the scream for the first time. Suddenly hundreds of naked kids came out of the dorms all at once. I just try to stay out of the way.” The guard didn’t want to be involved. He did his job and gave the students their privacy.
We left in search of the other night watchmen and found them sitting in a white vinyl wrapped SUV with a red Securitas and three dots emblazoned on the door. Two gruff elderly men sat inside and slowly rolled down the window on our approach. When we asked them why they were there, they said, “No comment. We are here just to watch,” alternating syllables.
“It’s Primal Scream,” he responded tentatively. “Are you excited, are you going to watch?”
Deep in the winding and confusing website of the Swedish Securitas AB corporation, they list the description of campus security officers: “our campus security officers are trained to help provide a safe and secure school environment for students, faculty and visitors.” Typically we conceive of safety as an active process, but all three guards had non-intuitive approaches. The first guard closed his eyes, while the second and third guards kept their eyes wide open. The longer we reflect on it now, it’s clear that they were focused on the third mission of a campus security officer: to keep visitors safe, to protect the voyeurism.
We pressed deeper into the center of the Yard, towards John Harvard’s glimmering toe. “Penis” was drawn into the fresh snow with small, determined feet. Then we saw him. We whispered between each other in almost reverent voices; we had spotted a “tourist.” As we were able to identify one tourist, a dozen others came into focus.
We walked up to the first man who stirred our radar and asked the same question we had asked the guards: “Do you know what tonight is?” His response was a simple and flat “Yes.” He suavely waddled away, literally a walking contradiction. He repositioned himself on the other side of the path, stood impassively, and prepared for the show to come.
Before we mustered the courage to approach another spectator, someone walked up to us: Kevin, a delivery driver from Louisiana on a “naked run” tour of the Northeast. Fresh off the road from UNC’s Primal Scream-equivalent, Kevin is well-versed in nude streaking rituals. While it can easily be argued that a middle-aged man driving 24-hours to observe potential underage nudity is creepy, Kevin quickly became human to us. We previously saw Primal Scream as a simple opportunity for students to burn off stress before finals, but Kevin brought a fresh perspective: Primal Scream is a celebration of the freedoms granted by our liberal institution. Being from the “Bible Belt” of the country, Christianity and Conservative values have constricted Kevin his whole life. For him, attending these naked runs is a pilgrimage, an opportunity to relish in freedom of expression. He was fascinated by Harvard’s lack of resistance to public nudity, something that would never be accepted in Louisiana. Over and over again he returned to the idea of freedom. In fact, Kevin was here and wanted to participate. He told us stories from joining naked bike rides in Portland, Oregon to nude runs in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Primal Scream is a celebration of the freedoms granted by our liberal institution.
At midnight, the students emerged from the freshmen dorms, revved up and in various states of undress. The commencement of their run concluded our wholesome moment with Kevin. He began recording the Screamers, making us think that he was there for more than a respectful observance of freedom. We still believe that Kevin was not in attendance to deliberately make the runners uncomfortable, but he must have known that his recording device would have that effect.
Later in the night, one runner described their reaction to seeing the bright white flash of an iPhone camera. They immediately pulled up their drawers—an act of repression, with people like Kevin ironically serving as the repressor.
Clearly, our initial reaction is to push people like Kevin to the fringe of society. To label them perverts and, in the case of our runner, deny Kevin pleasure. But are these visual tourists a disease infecting our community or a symptom of our community? Inside of Harvard dorm rooms, “Full Send” paraphernalia is on display, the purchase of which is to expressly fund the hedonistic lifestyles of 30-something pseudo-actors so that students can watch it on Youtube. On any given night, students are doing homework with a Twitch streamer playing a video game in the background of a colorful LED lit room. Everyday we choose to digitally live vicariously through others. At least Kevin had the decency to come in person. To watch the jumble of flesh oozing its way around the yard pulsing with the energy of adolescents. To watch the catharsis. To watch the night.
Noah Tavares ’24 (noahtavares@college.harvard.edu) currently has clothes on.
Ella Hilton ’24 (ellahilton@college.harvard.edu) watched Primal Scream on a lawn chair.