MIZZOU NEWS

Campus Pranks

@Mizzou readers share memories of mischievous jokes and tricks during college…

In 1967 there were some news reports of UFOs being sighted in the Columbia, Mo., area. Strange lights were reported flashing, hovering and moving about the night sky. To add to the community’s entertainment, some boys from Francis House in Reynolds Hall made hot air balloons from overcoat-sized dry cleaner bags. These balloons were powered by either birthday cake candles taped to soda straws crossed at the bottom or by a bottle cap of rubbing alcohol with a wick.

We would launch the balloons at night from behind Reynolds Hall or on the Quad by the Columns. The fire would flicker and the plastic bags would light up giving the illusion of rapid, erratic movement. Once a police car was seen following a bag with a spot light. After some took off quite well, disappearing into the distance, there were more news reports of UFOs over Columbia, which were then followed by reports of little green men seen in farm fields arriving by UFO. We stopped the activity after someone who said he was a police officer called the dorm and asked that we stop launching whatever those lights were because one landed in the median of I-70. The news reports gradually ceased. A good time was had by all.

– Joe Casey BS BA ’70

One of my good friends lived across the hall from me in Schurz and had the same model TV as me. I was perplexed as to why my TV would spontaneously change channels. After a couple weeks, my roommate finally spilled the beans and told me that my friend had been using his remote control to change the channels on my TV.

I went to my resident assistant and got a receipt from his generic receipt book and filled it out. After coming back from a weekend at home, I showed the fake receipt to my friend and told him that I had taken my TV to a repair shop and that it had cost me $200 to get it fixed. Boy, did he look guilty! I let him stew for a few days before I let him off the hook.

– Paul Hess, BS Ed ’94

There once was a young man named Paul
Who in the ’70s lived in Mark Twain Hall.
He was rude and obnoxious
And his floor mates did not like this
So daily his education was stalled.

Behavior modification was chosen to test.
Grab him daily no matter his dress.
Throw him in the pool clothed
Even twice with his betrothed
And once on Homecoming with his guests.

24 hours a day we did seek
To assure us of the dunking streak.
The saga continued for 54 days
A daily dunking to influence his ways
And the weasel turned into the meek.

So after two months of wetness we saw
A completely new attitude in Paul.
The chlorine went straight to his head
Most likely the night he went in with his bed
But after months he became nicer to all.

Note: The name in the above poem has been changed to protect the guilty.

– Dave Green, BS Ed ’76

As a member of the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority from 1968-72, playing pranks just went with the territory.

I was an avid collector of penguins, thanks to my Alpha Delta Pi friend Kathy Davis, who collected frogs and thought I needed a collection, too. I had penguins all over my sorority house room. One night my roommates Libby Dan and Marcy Melnick were so fed up with my “black and white friends” that they took my 4-foot blow-up penguin, a gift from my Dad, and tied him to my bed.

When I got home late from my date, I didn’t want to turn on the light, so I tiptoed through the dark room and was surprised to find my bed occupied. My penguin was securely tied to the mattress, and I had to sleep on the floor. My sorority sisters took quite a few pictures while I was sleeping.

Yes, I still collect penguins…

– Nancy Sigoloff Taback, BS RPA ’72

The girls of Gamma Phi Beta has a life-size cutout of Bette Midler that was used during fall Rush when we sang “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” The next spring, Bette showed up all over campus. She visited fraternities, ringing their doorbells to be asked in. One night she hung herself in front of the GPB house. After all of her travels, she was much worse from the wear and could not stand “hanging around” anymore. But my friend Christie and I sure had fun while she lasted.

– Julie Penrod Jenkins, BS ’83

I have a very clear memory of a few Lathrop Hall girls and some ladies from Laws Hall “serenading” one another to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” In our attempt to try and keep up with the camels and fire show happening across the street, we were only threatened with being kicked out of the dorms for the evening!

– Crystal Weber, BS ’01, MPA ’04

I had two friends who were the most diligent, studious students I knew – from Sunday afternoon until Friday afternoon. They blew off a lot of steam on the weekends. One particular Saturday night they had reached a state of mind where they decided that they needed a fireplace in their apartment at 2012 W. Ash. They went out and acquired bricks. They built what appeared to be a decent fire place. Of course it was just a brick façade with no fire box or chimney.

It looked so good to them that they lit a fire in it. Heavy smoke persuaded them to put it out quickly and no real damage was done.

We are lucky to survive our youth.

– Marty Laurent, BS ME ’70

During Engineers Week the conflict between engineers and aggies seemed to reach its peak. The engineers would fill light bulbs with green paint by taking the metal end off and then drive by our white house, which was on Virginia at that time. They would lean out of the car and flip the light bulbs underhanded and hit our fraternity house. As you can imagine, it left quite a mess.

Deciding to catch them in the act, I sat in a car at curbside from 4-6 a.m., armed with raw eggs.

Sure enough, about 5:30 a.m. a car came by, slowed down next to the curb and the driver threw something. I felt so pleased with myself as I emptied my carton of eggs until the driver threw something out at the next house, and the next .... It was the newspaper delivery man.

For years I was too ashamed to admit my mistake.

– Ron Lemonds BS ’58

Just mention spring and pranks in the same breath, and I can’t help but think about the spring of 1974 (or was it 1975?) when the students decided to break the world streaking record. We had gotten kind of used to all the streakers running across campus as the weather warmed – they hardly got a second glance, even in the library. But everyone around campus was talking one day about the attempt to break the streaking record that night at the Columns.

Thousands of students must have shown up (yes, I was there with my husband just to observe the historic event). One girl, a la Joan of Arc, road by nude on a white horse. The Quadrangle was packed with onlookers, and the media were there to document the event on the evening news. Then the streakers began to gather behind the Columns to run through, one at a time, so that they could be counted. Suddenly the person next to me, a casual acquaintance, handed me his clothes, and off he ran. I stood there, holding his overalls and underwear, thinking this has to be the weirdest thing I’d ever witnessed in my life.

After the streakers were all counted, they ran down the street toward the union, and the onlookers either followed or left to go home. I stood there holding the clothes I was given, but the owner never came back for them. I have often wondered how the evening ended for him considering his bare condition. Now I’m 53 years old, and I think back on that night and chuckle. I am so glad I was there; I’ve been able to enjoy this memory all of these years.

– Susan Denham Childress, BS ’74, M Ed ’75

Streaking and spring 1974 seemed to go together like milk and cookies. I was a scholarship player on the Mizzou freshman football team at the time. As the weather warmed, flowers began to bloom, and the smell of early spring grass was in the air. A new fad was sweeping the country on college campuses – its name was “streaking.”

Streaking seemed like it was a great idea, and most of my buddies on the team agreed. When we waited near the library, a place in which I rarely spent time, for the much-anticipated streaking runner, it all seemed to be coming together for me. I was starting to understand the meaning of life; why I was put on earth and how I could have a positive effect on others. You see, that afternoon as I and some fellow football players watched a young lady run down the street past thousands of onlookers (most were cheering the “runner” onward), we realized our “being.”

After furiously running (note that my eyes were not necessarily on her running form) down the main drag, the naked (I should state that she was wearing tennis shoes) young lady was corralled by one of our friendly campus police officers. The officer grabbed his coat and put it over the streaker’s shoulders, and then ushered her into his police vehicle. But before he could go around to the other side of his car, many of the onlookers/students/voyeurs closed in on him and pinned him with the mass of 100 or so bodies up against his car. Then in a miraculous move, the passenger side of his car somehow opened up long enough for the young lady to run away, and boy did she run.

Later on in life, I recognized the tenacity of her gate when I saw Forest Gump do his thing. Unfortunately, that poor officer could not untangle himself from the many people/good citizens. Somehow that day, while trudging over to the Mizzou practice fields with my buddies, I understood that many can do what a single mind cannot. I also understood that if the masses were engaged, some good would come of the collective thought process. And finally at the ripe old age of 18, I saw that I could have a positive influence on others if I just did the right thing. After all, isn’t that what college is all about?

– Tim Gibbons, BS PA ’77

I have a painful campus prank memory that I will share with you. In fall 1980, I was a freshman at MU and living in a fraternity on Providence Road. Another fraternity member decided we needed a Christmas tree for our house, and said there was one he’d been “scoping out” all year over on Stadium Boulevard. So four of us grabbed a handsaw one December night and jumped into my roommate’s station wagon and headed out to harvest the tree.

We parked on the shoulder of Stadium across from the old MU Alumni Center, climbed up the embankment to the backyard of a homeowner, and quickly sawed down a beautiful 6-foot-tall blue spruce tree. Then we drug it down the embankment, stuffed it into the station wagon and drove back to the house. It was very exciting.

We got back to the house and set the tree up. It looked so good that, believe it or not, we decided that we should have a tree for each floor of the house! So, with the adrenaline pumping, we climbed back into the station wagon and drove to the same unsuspecting homeowner’s yard. I’m ashamed to say we cut down two more beautiful 6-foot-tall blue spruce trees. This time, I was driving the get-away car. I pulled across Stadium and into the Alumni Center parking lot to turn around. Big mistake. We were spotted by the campus police.

I decided to keep driving and hope for a miracle. By the time we got to the intersection of Stadium and Providence, we were surrounded by several campus police cars, and the officers came at us with guns drawn. We immediately surrendered and confessed. The police took us to the homeowner’s house, woke him up and confirmed where the trees had come from. As you would expect, the homeowner was livid!

We waited several days and then made an appointment to see the homeowner and make amends. We got dressed up, went to his house, apologized profusely and offered to pay to have the trees replaced. We thought surely he would see that we were just nice young men who had made a mistake. Well, he was having none of it. He said that the fraternities had been hitting his neighborhood for years anytime there was a jungle party or anything of the like, and that he was going to make an example of us. He said he would press charges, and that we could forget pursuing any type of advanced degree at MU. This would be on our permanent records. We left his house shaken and unable to understand why he was being so mean and unreasonable.

In the end, with the help of a lawyer, the homeowner agreed to accept three new trees and a beautiful wood privacy fence running the length of his property which, along with legal fees, cost each of us about $2,000.

It’s now 25 years later. All four perpetrators went on to graduate, pursue successful careers, marry and have children. As homeowners ourselves, we can now understand why the victim of our prank was so upset over a few trees. And, any time we’re in Columbia, we can still see the wood privacy fence standing high on the hill above Stadium as a monument to our foolishness!

– David Henry, BS ME ’84

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Last Update: November 15, 2007