Naked Orientation: When Yale Freshmen Were Photographed Nude

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Margo Gray (0:46)

One afternoon in the late 1970s, a Yale employee noticed a locked door in the gym. He was curious, so he opened it. The room looked like it hadn't been touched for decades. Inside he found boxes, stacks of them. And inside those boxes, photographs. Thousands of photographs of naked young men, shot from the front, side and profiles. The employee didn't know what to make of it, so he brought the athletic director down to see. The director didn't know either. But after some digging, they realized they'd uncovered the remnants of a strange chapter of Yale's history. And they acted quickly. Every photograph was shredded. Then, for extra precaution, the shreds were burned. All to ensure that no recognizable images of these Yale students would survive. They wanted to make it all disappear. But that history wouldn't stay hidden for long.

I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, the forgotten history of posture photos on America's college campuses.

Richard Senecaul (2:10)

I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. And you will never find a place more homogeneous or more boringly normal than Fargo.

Margo Gray (2:21)

This is Richard Senecaul. By his senior year of high school in 1965, he was more than ready to leave his hometown of Fargo, North Dakota behind. He had the credentials. He was a national merit scholar, top of his class. But that didn't make the college application process any less daunting.

Richard Senecaul (2:40)

When it came time to think about going to college, I didn't really have any help. My parents were supportive, but they had really no knowledge or any ability to assist me. So I was doing this entire process by myself.

Margo Gray (2:57)

But Richard did just fine on his own. He applied to seven Ivy League schools in Stanford and got into all of them. He ended up picking Yale. He wanted to be an architect, and a brand new Yale building had just graced the cover of Time magazine. So in September 1965, he and his dad packed up the car and drove east to New Haven, Connecticut. Two days and 1,500 miles later, Richard and his dad arrived at Yale.

It was one of those perfect early fall days. The leaves just starting to change color.

Richard Senecaul (3:33)

I've never seen the campus, and other than a few pictures in Yale promotional materials, didn't really know what it looked like. And there wasn't anything grand in Fargo at all. The tallest building in Fargo was six stories. So everything, when I hit the campus, I went, my God, this is gorgeous. And I was just stunned.

Margo Gray (3:53)

It wasn't only the beauty of the campus that surprised him. From the start, Richard says he felt like a stranger in a strange land.

Richard Senecaul (4:02)

I knew nothing about the East Coast, nothing about New England. I mean, North Dakota is as far from Yale as you can possibly get.

Margo Gray (4:10)

For starters, Richard was confused why so many of his classmates somehow knew each other already. He discovered that many of them, the preppies, as he calls them, had come from the same small circle of elite prep schools. And then there was the uniform. Yale had instructed freshmen to wear a coat and tie to class. So Richard had dutifully purchased a whole new wardrobe. But when he showed up, he learned there was an unspoken memo. Everyone actually wore tweed jackets with elbow patches and a deliberately rumpled tie.

Richard Senecaul (4:41)

There wasn't a thing that happened on any given day that wasn't outside of my experience.

Margo Gray (4:46)

But one thing in particular felt completely outside his experience. It began when he got instructions to report to Yale's main gymnasium, Pain Whitney.

Richard Senecaul (4:56)

It's a massive high-rise building with multiple indoor pools and indoor running tracks and weight rooms and bunches of locker rooms. You know, we called Pain Whitney the Catedral de Sport. Because if you've seen the building, it's a high-rise gothic building that could easily pass for a French cathedral.