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In Christensen Hall in the mid-'80s, the dorm PA system was periodically commandeered—from a stall in the men's bathroom, allegedly—by someone who took on the persona of a "Mad Max" character. Each rant began with "All rise for the Humungus!" and included whimsical pronouncements, such as "Third-floor girls! Return our shower curtains!" An all-points bulletin was issued to every R.A. in the building during broadcasts, and yet the Humungus and his henchmen were never caught, reports Heidi Held Blalock '86.

Gary Sredzienski '85, whose "Polka Party" radio show on WUNH-FM actually started as a kind of joke in 1986, has been playing April Fools' pranks on the airways ever since, often with the help of special guests. One year it was announced that Sredzienski had been sacked because his show wasn't "ethnically diverse" enough. Another time, Andrzej Rucinski, professor of electrical and computer engineering, announced in his Polish accent that an "authentic Pole" was taking over the show. When Sredzienski played two hours of "Sing Along with Mitch" another year, it was more than one elderly Polish lady could take. "How dare you do this," she wrote, "especially on Holy Saturday!"

Listener response was exactly what station manager Scott Piehler '86 was looking for when he staged a 1985 April Fools' joke in response to Student Senate calls for WUNH to change to a more "student friendly" Top-40 format. The station became "The New 91" for the day and played nothing but Top-40 hits. Piehler recorded the (mostly irate) incoming calls—about two to three hours' worth—to make the case before the senate that the station should continue in its alternative niche, where it remains today.

Fast forward to the 21st century, when strange words would scroll across a computer science student's monitor: "Hello, Justin. This is God. Stop surfing the Internet and finish your assignment!" Ethan Mallove '05 was one of the pranksters who hijacked computers from across the room. "Since this was a simple hardware puzzle," he says, "the victims would eventually resolve it through standard computer science geekery."

Stressors for Professors

While most college pranks are of the peer-to-peer variety, there have also been a few brave souls who dared to take on their professors—or even the president. In 1982, President Evelyn Handler woke up one morning to find a veritable menagerie of ornamental creatures on her lawn: flamingos, ducks, frogs, rabbits and gnomes. Owners were later invited to the police station to pick up their critters.

Roberta Humphrey Manter '75 remembers riding instructor Janet Briggs as "a very serious, no-nonsense sort of person who did everything strictly by the rules." Even so, her Advanced Riding students mustered the gumption to celebrate April Fool's Day by wearing costumes to class. Manter went as a clown, and for a crowning touch, she seated herself backwards on a former circus horse named Pancho. When Briggs arrived, she seemed to be stifling a grin, but she surveyed the group calmly and then pronounced, "All trot, please." Pancho immediately complied, much to Manter's dismay. "English saddles are not built for riding backwards," she notes, "and it was rather hard on the tailbone!"

Sometime around 1960, a group of chemistry graduate students decided to try to get their mild-mannered professor, Alexander "Sandy" Amell, to swear. Amell had done some glass blowing for his research and arranged the elegant pieces on the lab bench. The students hid the professor's glassware and replaced it with broken pieces of glass, putting a steel gas cylinder on top to simulate an accident. When Amell walked into the lab and saw the "disaster," he looked horrified. "Then out came the words 'Holy cow!'" says Allen Denio '61, '63G. "We never did get him to curse."

Dorm Sweet Dorm

When it comes to college pranks today, there's no place like a dorm, not to mention Greek houses, apartment complexes and the houses on Young Drive. It was in fact on Young Drive that some housemates in the mid-'90s used to obey the late-night TV command to "Act now!" With a few quick phone calls, "treats" ranging from American Girl Doll catalogs to male enhancement brochures were dispatched to unsuspecting friends—at their parents' home addresses. Perhaps the most popular dorm prank of all has been filling up a room with things like popcorn, helium balloons, crumpled newspapers, soda cans—or "borrowed" objects like construction signs. Another variation was to simply fill the doorway while the occupant was sleeping. Dana Rosengard '82 recalls one victim opening her door in the morning to find "a wall of popcorn cascading down on her, pooling at her feet, her ankles, her shins. All, of course, while she had to go to the bathroom."

Some people really know how to turn the tables on pranksters, though—like one student who found her dorm room filled from floor to ceiling with crumpled newspapers. She was "a born-again Christian who really practiced the forgiveness she preached," recalls Manter. She just said, "Oh, you silly freshmen!" and went to stay with friends for the night, leaving the deflated pranksters to clean up the mess.

Another favorite trick: steal the clothing of showering hallmates, and then watch them dash down the hallway wrapped in a shower curtain. Pete Reynolds '84, the mastermind behind the chicken bouillon showers on Stoke's 7th floor, had the rare experience of receiving praise for his prank—from the victims, no less. "A few of the ladies came up and congratulated me," he says, "on a great prank that caused no lasting harm."

The upperclassmen in Eaton House, which is next to the train tracks, probably weren't thanked for one of their favorite pranks, however. "We snuck into the rooms of freshmen at 3 a.m. with a flashlight," recalls MaryLynn Salerno '92, "and while poised right over their bed suddenly screamed, 'Look out! Train!'"

Many students have learned the hard way that furniture sometimes has a disturbing tendency to show up in unexpected places. Katie Roy '05 once returned to her room in "the Ghettos" only to find every single thing—including the couch, picture frames, food in the fridge, dishes, curtain rods, CDs and salt shakers—turned upside down. A few years earlier, passersby gawked at a roomful of furniture meticulously recreated outside on Zeta Chi's sandy volleyball court. The look on the brother's face when he came home, according to Francisco Clavijo '02: "priceless."

As a freshman in Lord Hall, Bruce Corson '74 apparently believed in "better pranks through chemistry." In his first foray, he mixed chemicals together to make "little purple crystals that would pop like a cap gun underfoot." Emboldened, he applied Le Chatelier's principle to enhance the explosions, but the mixture blew up in the bathtub. He managed to emerge unscathed—although his face was temporarily stained purple. Later, he and his friends constructed a 4-foot-long beer-can cannon, stuffed it with lighter-fluid-soaked toilet paper rolls and fired them out the bathroom window. The result was impressive enough to attract two policemen walking by outside. "As they burst into the bathroom, they kept hearing the sound of 'pop-bang-bam' from the remaining contact explosive crystals," recalls Corson. "They didn't ask. They just made us stop firing off the cannon and then left us alone."

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