It wasn’t quite a wardrobe malfunction, but a recent garment-shedding incident involving two top officials at Columbia College Chicago has nonetheless gotten the campus all atwitter.

The administrators — Mark Kelly, vice president for student affairs, and Eliza Nichols, dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts — doffed a button-down shirt and a bra, respectively, during a kickoff rally last month for Manifest 2009, a student-arts festival, The Columbia Chronicle reported last week.

According to a tape of the rally, Mr. Kelly told the crowd assembled for the event that he was “not feeling quite comfortable,” and then removed his shirt and changed into a Manifest 2009 T-shirt. Ms. Nichols then stepped up to the podium, removed her bra from underneath her blouse, and held it up, saying, “This is the Manifest color this year… Mark didn’t give me a T-shirt.”

Mr. Kelly later told the newspaper that he was simply trying to get students “into the spirit” of the arts festival. “I was just the coach putting on the jersey,” he said. “That’s what I was trying to do.”

The incident, which spurred a public apology from the college’s president, Warrick L. Carter, is still under review, and no disciplinary actions have yet been taken. —David Shieh