Seeing students going back to school got me to thinking. If we have done nothing else, my family has covered a lot of territory. My husband, Doug, started a string of three generations going to Ole Miss, but excluding them, no one else chose the same institution. I went to the W; besides the Ole Miss daughter, our other two daughters went to Sewanee and Mississippi State; and so far our grandchildren have been to Mississippi Southern, Delta State, Middlebury (Vermont), Hamilton (New York), Southern Methodist University (Dallas), and Washington University at Saint Louis. We do not seem to be inclined to establish a dynasty on any campus.
I say all that to explain the fact that I get a lot of alumni magazines from these places. One that I received recently surprised me by printing a feature article on memorable pranks. I cannot remember any pranks that my own class pulled, nor can the classmates I asked about it. I think I have already written about some Doug’s buddies at Ole Miss executed. Someone in my daughter Diana’s class at Heritage managed to get a tire over the flagpole. But so far I had never seen an alumni magazine feature them. I thought it might be fun to share.
Maybe because the University of the South, an Episcopal school at Sewanee, Tennessee, is an isolated campus, the students have to manufacture a lot of their own entertainment. I think the town of Sewanee had one traffic light the last time I counted.
I guess that’s why pranks flourish.
In 1967 the university newspaper established a standard for pranks, frowning upon “wrecking trains, destroying buildings, maimings, and hangings, unless such acts afford immense hilarity.” Here is how some of them are recorded in the magazine Sewanee.
A young calf appeared mysteriously on the third floor of an academic building. Apparently cows cannot go down stairs. Some say the calf had to be blindfolded and each hoof manually moved down the stairs. Others say a crane moved it from the second floor. Still others claim it was butchered and its ghost roams the halls, mooing.
In 1956 someone stole a cannon and put it in front of a fraternity house, finally involving not only the police, but the sheriff, the state police and the FBI. During the night someone painted the cannon with stripes, whales, fleur de lis, etc. Later it was painted a more sedate dark green.
Paint played a part in other pranks, too. A water tower had been labeled Sewanee Utility District. Naturally someone had to paint an F in front of Utility. They also stenciled the words “Sperm Bank” underneath. In the 1990s some Phi pledges painted “See Rock City” on the pitched roof of the KA house.
In the late 1960s English professor Willie Cocke’s Volkswagon Bug was slipped into neutral one night and silently rolled down the road where it was left in front of the dining hall. The police found it before the professor missed it.
One Christmas break pranksters stuffed a classmate’s dorm room from floor to ceiling with crumple newspapers, sheet by sheet.
On one occasion a military convoy had to cross the campus, their only available route across the mountain. Some students replaced the directional signs, sending the convoy down a long, winding road. It took days for them to back out.
In 2005 someone stacked all of the metal tables on a patio into a pyramid. One wonders how. A crane had to be moved in to disassemble the wobbly structure.
Cars have been stuffed with leaves and a wild rooster turned loose in classrooms. And during the ’70s the campus had its share of streakers, who usually had the foresight to put paper sacks over their heads.
Now I hope that my enumerating these pranks does not give anyone ideas, especially since Hallowe’en approaches. I believe I am safe as far as the student generation is concerned. I doubt if I have many readers in that group; I am not electronic. It does make you wonder, doesn’t it, how any of these youngsters ever got an education.
Or did they?
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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