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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 29, 1993)
» B I No Its not the Invasion of the tackiest neighbors from hell on higher education, just 1,000 plastic flamingos at the U. of Wisconsin. IT’S ALL FUN AND GAMES Crazy student pranksters sabotage campuses ll\ Mike* Mnt r, / lit Hailgvi Herald. I . ol Wisconsin They lurk in the shad ows, scheming oi nefarious deeds and descending on unsus pecting campuses. Thev sal><> tage university computers, deface campus property and harass administrators. Hlaik fair paint anti (hr theme from fusion Imfituablr air, of course, optional — usually irserved lor those special strikes Hut when puling oil Irgrndaiv college pranks one thing is certain: it's gotta be big And big certainly is what California Institute of Technology pranksters had in mind when they attarked the HOl-LY* W< H )l) sign with visions o( sc hool pndr m their heads In Mas IW7, as the centennial of Hollywood appioarhrd. students at Caltech derided to altei the sign to sa\ something a bit more... scholarly. In the middle ol the night, the students used plas tic sheeting, nylon ropes, duct tape and (limbing rcpnpment to Hailstorm the leg endary landm.uk to read (-M I H H Since 1902 when a drinking club at Yale T tricked temperance advocate Carry Nation into [rosing foi pictures with them as dies smoked and held steins of Irccr, col lege students have persisted in hoaxing thru stem administrators anti ra< h mlin Students alwass seem Milling to lest thru brain power it u Mil! irsult in a laugh ratlin than a grade Man Rouse, dean ot students at the 1 ol Wisconsin, s.iss pranks air an important outlet toi student expression 'I must dil Inrntiale hrtMerii main jous pranks and having tun I don’t discourage hannlcss ones at all. The Statue ot l aliens Mas one ol the liest events mt’vc ever had ' In HI79. the I’atl and Shovel Parts Mas elected to head the Wisconsin Student Association after promising — among other things — to waste students money, change everyone's name to Joe Smith (vi professors could know each student by name) and bring the Statue ol lalierty to Madison. They made good on then promises, constructing a lads labcrts mIio seemed to have been dropped in frozen lake Mendota. She Mas a 22-foot tall head front the budge of the nose upward and an arm 40 leet tall from wrist to the up of the torch Claiming thes had purchased it from a finannalls strapped New York, the parts said a helicopter transporting the statue (flopped it, sending it crashing through the ice. After an overwhelming victory again that fall, the Patl and Shovel crew planted more than 1,000 pink plastic flamingos on thr (ampus anil threw a toga |>.irt> for 10,000 people, during which Aninuil Home |i,iriri John ltrloshi phoned in Im support. Although ihr I'.ul and Shovel party had their detractors, thr humor they brought to campus was welcomed 'In fact, if (heir's anything we could use more til among our students, it is more gentle humor," Rouse savs. In an attempt to till this dearth, ot at least stimulate students to action, prankster Nnl Steinberg has authored the mist hiei-makri s biblr, if At All I'outble, lmvh<ra (iuu The hook of ('jollege iAxmks In Involve a Cow, thr majority of the painstakingly dotumenlrd pranks occur at small, elitist s< hoots like Harvard l- and Yale “People have to think they're sproal to do pranks, it you're just some |oe Schmo happy to get into st liool and get your degree and then grab a job, you're not going to commit any pranks because they're not going to occur to you.* Steinberg says. “You also have to have the leisure tune to say, 'The Dome is going to look better as a... tit." In past years the (treat Dome at thr Massat husrtts Institute of Technology has been doctored to resemble a birthday c ake, a jack-o'-lantern and. perhaps in a commentary on the sex lives of Ml'I males, a female breast. But MIT's antics only begin there “Foil also have to have the leisure time to say, ‘The Dome is going to look better as a... tit." Steinberg says that during the years tin s< IiihiI lias formed a fierce prank-commit ting rivalry with (-litre It. While (laltechers were entering a McDonald's contest I 2 million times, MIT undergrads weir mvrnling new forms ol measurements like the Bruno (the indentation caused when a piano lands on com rele). While ( allei h pulled the (.teat Rose Bowl Hoax (cltaitg mg the lltpeard display to read “Caltet h" on national television), Ml I caused a giant weather balloon to hurst through the turi at the 1 larvald-Yale football game But the times they are a-changin' That smell user at MI 1 is not the devious burn ing ol midnight oil ol the 1 c< hnologs Hackers \ssociation (the resident "prank club") but ol i hemn al reactions as stu dents - gasp — study " I his is the right place loi pranks," s.ns undeigtadtiate Rruvrn 1 eamei “It it’d happen anvwheie it'd lie Mi l But people have lieen pretty, fioring." Strinlierg is dismayed In this l.u k ol dev dish dediiation. “I think students forget that they're not inventing the wheel." he savs " I "hey don't have a sense ol tradition, ol their place in history." In Invohf a Cow, Steinberg lists six rules to pranking I he sixth rule recommends the inclusion ol a bovine, but most impoi tanliv. the first rule is ‘You have to at tualiv do it." Remember (hut. Bui viiih- pranking lives on as students lake to campuses with their shenanigans I he liny Southern Minnesota town of Northliekf proves a veritable treasure trove of triekeiv With St. ( flat and (larleton, two hlieial arts sc hoofs, situated less than two miles ai loss town from eat ft othet. the |m» vitalities lot prankishness seem endless At St Olai last May "someone sent a slip to all of the seniors saving they were short one class, and the (registrar's] office was mobbed.’ savs student (ihtts Raster. Registrar John Treoem amends Kasiei s storv. ‘Actually only f>0 of our 7?0 gradu ates received a fake notice,’ he said “I drought it was funny. About half of die lid fainted, and then showed up at the regis trar's nflitr in a state of absolute terror...." Ac toss town at (jrlelun, pranking is con sidered just 'taking care of business." President Stephen R. lewis reserved him self a place in history wtdi his handling of the demands of a 1991 group named RAI.SK — Replace All Institutional Symbols with KJvis. After kidnapping tire American flag and unfurling one hearing The King, they demanded ‘the leader of our commu nity perform an Klvis impersonation.* lewis obliged with a tear-inducing rendi tion of ‘Mound Dog" at a council meeting Venerable institutions like Cwleton seem conducive to pranking, lewis says. "Part of our message to students when they arrive is take issues seriously, but don't take yourselves seriously. We do try lo havr fun here; contemplating the purposes of the universe all the time can be a bit restraining.’ »