This is a classic.
A group of Yale students donned red “Harvard Pep Squad” T-shirts and passed out colored cards to Harvard fans at the annual game. Everyone was told to raise their cards on-signal and the words “GO HARVARD” would be spelled out in Crimson and Silver.
At the signal, the fans raised their boards for this photograph:
As Jim says, “Start with intelligence. Add grain alcohol. Season liberally with “Inferiority Complex”. That is the recipe for truly fantastic college prank.”
At Camp USAFA, freshmen were often encouraged to go on “Spirit Missions” which sometimes taxed their creative juices. A couple of memorable ones:
The Academy has several X-planes on display, experimental aircraft flown in the ’50s and ’60s. One morning, everyone was greeted by the sight of one of these near the top of the Academy Chapel. After several days of discussion, the Superintendent offered amnesty to those who had accomplished the feat if only they would explain how they did it so the aircraft could be safely removed.
Another common “fun” thing was to empty some officer’s furniture onto the hill in the middle of the campus. Cadets, in the middle of the night, would take everything from his office and set it up precisely.
The Class of ’94 set a standard which will be hard to beat. At the end of the freshman year, a new class is “recognized”, which means they are no longer non-entities to upperclassmen. This involves about a week of rigorous activity, and begins on a day they are not supposed to know about. I was in the squadron area at 0300 with the upper class cadets as they prepared to roust the youngsters and get them going for the first day. As they went around banging on doors, it soon became apparent that all the freshmen were gone. The older cadets were livid, and got even madder when I simply grinned and enjoyed the prank. The ENTIRE freshman class had put together an operation in secret, pulling it off without anybody else knowing about it. To do that they had to first find out which would be the first day of “Recognition,” then build the plan keeping everyone–cadets and officers–in the dark about it. They all departed the dorms earlier and climbed to the top of the mountain overlooking the Academy where they were later found. When was the last time you heard of 1200 people keeping a total secret?
One of my friends there, a West Point grad, told me about another prank his class pulled on a Navy officer who taught there. The squid had a Triumph TR-7 which was his pride and joy. On the morning before the Army-Navy game, he saw a group charging $2 for each swing at a car with a sledge hammer. When he walked over, he found it was his car! When he went ballistic (and who wouldn’t) one of the cadets reached into his pocket to pull something out. “This isn’t your car. Yours is over there,” and handed him the keys to a brand new TR-7. They had taken up a collection beforehand to buy the new car just so they could pull this prank.
When I was at USNA, a similar car-bashing was done for one of the Company officers. He was an aviator who drove a ratty car, and one morning the firsties in his company showed up at his door bright and early, said, “Good morning, sir” and proceeded to bash his car further into junk.
Then they presented him with the keys to a VW Beetle, which had been painted like a jet, with his name stenciled below the driver’s window, “No Step” on the fenders, and so on.
Ah, memories of moving display jets and cannon to inappropriate locations – gotta love it.
Comment by wheels — December 2, 2004 @ 1:59 pm