AT PRINCETON, A CHILLY RESPONSE TO SOPHOMORIC ANTICS

PRINCETON -- At least since the days of disco, the keen-minded
undergraduates of Princeton University have considered it a right -- a
solemn duty even -- for members of the sophomore class to gather at midnight
following the winter's first substantial snowfall and run naked through
Holder Courtyard, a wide quadrangle surrounded by Gothic dormitory
buildings. They call it the Nude Olympics.

Not surprisingly, the students who participate in this quarter-century-old
tradition are often emboldened by alcohol. But the drinking and frigid
frolicking can be a bad mix.

After this year's Nude Olympics on Friday night, five students were
hospitalized with alcohol poisoning and four more were treated at the
school's health center, prompting the university's president, Harold T.
Shapiro, to suggest that the tradition should end.

"While I recognize that versions of this event have been a regular
occurrence in recent years, I believe we can no longer tolerate the risks
that it has come to pose to our students," Dr. Shapiro wrote in a terse
letter to the editor that was published on Wednesday in The Daily
Princetonian, the student newspaper. "I am simply not willing to wait until
a student dies before taking preventive action."

He said a committee headed by the dean of student life, Janina Montero,
would be formed to consider the event's future.

While Dr. Shapiro's letter to The Princetonian stopped short of calling for
an outright ban of future Nude Olympics, he and other administrators,
including Ms. Montero, and several of the masters of the school's
residential halls have made it clear that putting an end to the annual
streak through the snow is pretty much what they have in mind. In addition
to the drinking, school officials have cited concerns about sexual activity
that took place in Holder Courtyard on Friday night.

But any suggestion of banning the Nude Olympics is almost certain to anger a
large number of undergraduates who regard the event as a rite of a passage
and an integral aspect of the Princeton experience. "Why else come to
Princeton over Harvard and Yale?" Lance Nedham, a junior, asked in The Daily
Princetonian earlier this week. Even with final exams underway this week,
the shadow cast by Dr. Shapiro over the future of the Nude Olympics has
dominated campus conversation.

On the snow-covered campus Thursday night, most students were hunkered down
in the library or their dorm rooms to study. Brian Stewart, a junior who was
walking home to Dodd Hall to study for an exam on European intellectual
history, said the Nude Olympics offered Princeton students one night to let
loose. "The Nude Olympics is something where everybody gets together and
does something that is probably crazier than any other school has," he said.
"So while we're not crazy at all at any other time during the year, we make
up for it in one night."

Stewart was among the spectators who watched the 350 or so students -- most
clad in little more than boots and scarves -- participate Friday night, and
said he had called for medical attention for one participant who was drunk
and injured. "He was lying on the stairs, completely naked, just completely
knocked out. He was taken away."

Officials said that all the students who received treatment on Friday night
were expected to make a full recovery.

Word that future Nude Olympics were in jeopardy quickly spread from the
Princeton campus to alumni who immediately began to discuss the situation by
E-mail. "Will the sociopaths be removed from the community or will the event
be removed from the community?" wrote Terry Wintroub, a member of the class
of 1969. Peter Dutton, a member of the class of 1991, asked: "Can't
undergraduates run naked in a restrained and dignified manner anymore?"

The debate comes at a time when drinking at Princeton is under scrutiny by a
subcommittee of the university's trustees. The committee is expected to
announce its initial findings at a meeting of trustees later this month and
to recommend possible changes to the university's alcohol regulations this
spring. "The problem here at Princeton is the same as it is everywhere else
and it is as serious as it is everywhere else," said Justin Harmon, a
university spokesman.

Even defenders of the Nude Olympics concede that this year's event got a
little out of control and they have offered several reasons for the
exceptionally raucous run. To start, there was no Nude Olympics last year
because of a lack of snow, meaning that this year's sophomores did not get
to observe the event as freshmen and were perhaps excessively boisterous.
Also this year's event fell on the last Friday before exams, meaning no
classes the next day and more steam to blow off.

Still, this is not the first Nude Olympics to get out of hand. In 1992, 31
Princeton students pleaded guilty to violating a municipal ordinance by
extending their naked run off campus, onto public streets and even into some
businesses. They were fined $100 and sentenced to community service.

While administrators have almost always expressed a certain disdain for the
event, Dr. Shapiro's statement this week was the first suggestion that the
university might seek to end it.

Steven A. Caputo, a sophomore from Montgomery, N.J., who ran naked on Friday
night, said he enjoyed being part of an institutional tradition. "It seemed
like everyone was having a good time," he said. "I circled the place at
least 10 times, it was fantastic. It was really a liberating experience."