When you rip hundreds of young people from their childhood homes and thrust them into the endless torture machine of college life, it\u2019s a certainty that they will find a host of ways to let off steam. Some students party a little too hard; others pour themselves into their studies, eschewing all social activities and habitual bathing.
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\nThen, there are those who conspire against their academic oppressors, devising evil schemes to create campus chaos and disorder. Those brave young men and women are college pranksters. Some pranks are simple and amusing, others are complicated and cerebral. But they\u2019re a part of college history, and some of them deserve to be honored for their sheer hilarity and genius. Here, in no particular order, are some of the best.
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Students at Minnesota\u2019s Carleton College draped the campus conservatory in spray painted sheets to make what could be the world\u2019s largest Star Wars character replica<\/a>. On September 4, 1979, University of Wisconsin-Madison\u2019s Bascom Hill was decorated by the campus\u2019s Pail and Shovel Party. More than a thousand pink flamingo lawn ornaments<\/a> graced Bascom Hill, greeting students as they made their way to campus that morning. It was a silly ploy to gain seats in the school\u2019s student government. And it worked: they won 29 seats. There\u2019s still some debate over which is more ridiculous: the existence of a Sacred Cod or its theft. The consecrated fish presided over the Massachusetts House of Representatives chamber until it was stolen<\/a> by members of the Harvard Lampoon<\/em> in 1933. After two days of panic, the cod was returned to its rightful place. This one\u2019s a doozy: it takes serious guts to hijack a college football game viewed by millions, but fourteen students from the California Institute of Technology managed to pull it off. With a daring operation that involved altering a crowd sign that was supposed to spell \u201cWashington,\u201d but instead spelled \u201cCalTech<\/a>.\u201d Nerds pull the best pranks, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) produces some of the world\u2019s best nerds and pranks, so you\u2019ll see them more than once on this list. A full-size replica of the Doctor\u2019s phone box spaceship was perched on top of Building 7 on the MIT campus. You can find this and other pranks on the university\u2019s page dedicated to such exercises in humor<\/a>. This obscure but nevertheless valiant hero and patriot<\/a> never existed, but that didn\u2019t stop several politicians, including a United States vice president, from praising him. (No, it wasn\u2019t Joe Biden.) This prank must have taken a lot of elbow grease: students managed to move the 2000-pound statue of founder William Marsh Rice 180 degrees\u2014the first time in 58 years that the statue had been moved. The amount of planning and experimenting<\/a>that went into the prank is astonishing. It\u2019s important to remember that this is a joke; no animals were ever harmed in this prank. MIT shows up on this list again for the complicated and ingenious \u201cbonsai kitten<\/a>\u201d method of growing cats. Check Wikipedia<\/a>for a more complete explanation. Remember that scene from the original 1968 Planet of the Apes<\/em> when Charlton Heston discovers an abandoned and sand-covered Statue of Liberty? The campus\u2019s celebrated Pail and Shovel Party borrowed the idea, constructing an underwater Lady Liberty<\/a>on Lake Medota. Because dudes running through campus naked will always be funny, a brave group of \u201cathletes\u201d decided to create Hamilton College\u2019s first first varsity streaking team<\/a>. They never played a rival streaking team which, one imagines, is for the best.
\n <\/p>\n2. University of Wisconsin-Madison\u2019s field of flamingos<\/h3>\n
\n <\/p>\n3. Harvard\u2019s Theft of the Sacred Cod<\/h3>\n
\n <\/p>\n4. Great Rose Bowl Hoax of 1961<\/h3>\n
\n <\/p>\n5. Doctor Who\u2019s TARDIS visits MIT<\/h3>\n
\n <\/p>\n6. Cornell University\u2019s Hugo N. Frye<\/h3>\n
\n <\/p>\n7. Rice University\u2019s Statue Switch<\/h3>\n
\n <\/p>\n8. MIT\u2019s Bonsai Kitten<\/h3>\n
\n <\/p>\n9. University of Wisconsin-Madison\u2019s Lady Liberty on Lake Medota<\/h3>\n
\n <\/p>\n10. Hamilton College\u2019s varsity streaking team<\/h3>\n
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