First Rain - History

History

First Rain started in fall of 1989, following the weeks of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Students, afraid to sleep inside the Porter College dorms, would sleep outside in the quad. Upon developing an outside lifestyle of playing small games like Simon Says, students dared each other to strip and run around campus naked. Over the past several years, First Rain's prerequisite formation rules were formed in order to give more students the chance to run: the run would only form on a school night, and rain had to fall nonstop for the entire day. At 10:00 pm, the run would begin in Porter. Historically however, First Rain runs did not have prerequisites to be met before beginning: these rules did not exist before the mid-2000s. During the 1990s, the rules were very simple: as soon as the heavy rains of the year fell, students were to disrobe and run. This is because nonstop rain would sometimes not occur before Winter Break. Aiming to make this event a yearly tradition as it is at other universities, the students decided on running during the first rain of every school year (since other events, like the first school day or first snow had already been taken by other universities).