Nothing destructive (walking down the Morgan staircase and stealing Fruitopia from the 'good stuff' boxes doesn't count as a prank) or terribly embarrassing. Nothing that will break the rules on those anti-hazing sheets we all have to sign in order to take classes. More along the lines of fun things that start traditions.
In If At All Possible, Involve a Cow, Neil Steinberg sets up what is basically the bible of college pranks. He warns that administrations like to take over student fun and use it to raise money. Amherst College has a statue of "Sabrina," which is much like the Goat's Head, in that it is absolutely useless to anyone but a member of the college community. There was a tradition of stealing it and photographing it in different locations, until someone got the idea of locking it up and awarding it to the alumni class that gave the most money.
So, new traditions must take place. There are enough people with the right mindset on this campus, if MIT can put a police car on top of a building (or make a dome look like a giant breast), where are the good WPI pranks?
Perhaps we could even get the administration to look the other way, for a moment, while we point out that pranks would improve community morale and generate school name recognition. But, you might ask, "how can we be sure no one will get hurt?" You can't. But hopefully students could be trusted not to do anything too stupid or dangerous and as long as they do not hurt the person or property of anyone who is not willing to participate, there should be few problems. There is a combination of child-like fun and adult-like responsibility, which most students have adopted by now, without much trouble.
Here are some guidelines from Steinberg's book, which is amazingly well researched for the topic: "the very definition of a prank is something that is pleasurable to retell. A prank must have some sort of wit, some sort of sense of hubris punctured or justice restored. Cruelty ruins a prank. Slyly tricking a stern temperance leader into visiting a notorious drinking club is a prank. Leading a procession of blindfolded pledges into the path of a speeding truck is not. To confuse the two is the same as thinking of those pouty clown paintings on black velvet whenever someone mentions the word 'art.'"
There are many good ideas for pranks around campus, but very few get carried out. There's enough "sacred and special" places on this campus that could stand having a little fun poked at them, so go ahead. Perhaps there should even be an SGA sponsored group that manages pranks, they could get funding to purchase required supplies. Other schools have voted people who vowed to spend their money only on pranks into office when they were fed up with their student governments, but something like that would probably never happen here.
The key thing to remember would be to make sure that no one got hurt and to only draw attention to yourself after you were done. Go ahead, have fun, you only get to be in college once!
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