Giant bunny squirts civilians with water gun, plays string quartet in birthday suit. Robots attack unsuspecting innocents as mad scientist looks on in horror. Pirates steal porch swing, instigate furniture war. These are not rejected headlines from the Onion, but pranks committed in recent weeks here at Oberlin.
Those who have lately donned bunny suits, cardboard apparati and swords and eye patches are a loose-knit group of people who share a common recognition that with All Roads Lead to Oberlin now in full swing, more attention must be paid to unsuspecting prospies. Harkness seems to be the epicenter — the site where most of the pranksters are recruited and planning and preparation typically occurs.
Junior Blaise Freeman, who is taking the semester off — which he admitted allows him plenty of time for pranks — strongly believes in the righteousness of the cause.
“We have such an impact on next year’s student body,” Freeman said. “I figure we can liven up the place a little more. We don’t want next year’s class to be lame.” He added that “none of this stuff is supposed to offend or annoy — we’re just having fun.”
Streaking is a classic favorite among pranksters, partly because it requires little preparation other than a few willing bodies.
But some feel that even getting naked has its limitations.
“Being carefree and silly is a wonderful thing, and we’re trying to get to the heart of it without relying on the shock value of nudity,” an anonymous prankster said. “We have streaked so many times that the novelty has worn off.”
April Fool’s Day was a defining moment for the pranksters. First, there was a human-sized bunny rabbit that roamed the town and campus throughout the day. Among other places, the rabbit appeared in the Con lounge, where it participated in a nude rendition of Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” and later in Tappan Square, where it squirted anyone who approached an ostensibly free box of clothes.
But for many, the most satisfying recent hoax was pulled on Keep. A worker from CDS entered Keep disguised as a health inspector, conducted a faux inspection, and announced a list of health code violations to the stunned Coop.
First-year Elana Riffle, who helped organize the prank, remembers the moment vividly: “At last she reported ‘it is my sad duty to tell you, as part of the Health Department of the State of Ohio, it’s April Fools Day!’”
“I’ve got four death threats from that,” Freeman said.
Since then, the pranks have continued in fits and starts. Sometimes they erupt spontaneously, such as last Saturday when a few people painted targets on their chests and challenged a passing tour to pelt them with water balloons.
But most pranks require at least some foresight and planning. Boxes from the Good Food Coop and homemade antennae were necessary props in the “Robot Warz” a few weeks ago.
“I was the mad scientist, controlling the robots,” first-year Sam Quintal said. “Then a circuit blew, and the robots went crazy and started attacking innocent civilians.”
The civilians were about fifty prospies and parents, who were walking outside of Harkness when they witnessed the spectacle. They didn’t all stand on the sidelines. According to a student, who asked to be referred to as “Durfee Jones,” “one prospie was a robot. He was from Berkeley.”
Of course, tours provide the ripest targets.
The idea, Freeman said, is “to give prospies an idea of how much fun Oberlin can be.”
Tactics vary depending on the day. Once, Freeman said, “we had a dozen people pecking at the ground and squawking like chickens.” On other occasions, pranksters have kidnapped their own prospie impersonators from group tours.
On one particular day, four fake prospies and a tour guide were sent into the middle of the fray. “We would follow the tour around and intersect them at different places. We would contradict everything the tour guide would say, and then we would keep running into them throughout the school,” Freeman said. “We called the Environmental Science building a nuclear incinerator.”
Sometimes the intended monkeyshine misses its mark. An anonymous prankster recalled being confronted by two elderly women after he streaked through the Con with a fellow prankster.
“We saw these old ladies taking pictures,” Freeman said. “We started getting our clothes on and crossed the street,” he said. “We then saw the same ladies pull up in a car, and say ‘hey can we get a picture?’ I stuck my arm over Jonah and then the lady in the front was like ‘no no, take it off.’ The woman in the back added, ‘she doesn’t get to see this very often.’” Freeman remarked, so to speak, that they received “a nice picture of Oberlin campus.”
Not everyone, it seems, finds the pranks amusing. “Sometimes when we have streaked or with some of our April Fools day pranks that involved nakedness people would look the other way. Often people just don’t get it or will say stuff like ‘You guys look ridiculous,’” Freeman said. He added, “Our clothed pranks have been very well received. Many times people make jokes or get really into it.”
Regardless of the joke, or whether the prank in question is deemed effective, they will continue. In Harkness Lounge, people were already planning for the following day, and names were being taken. At one point, Freeman was overheard asking Riffle, “Do you want to do the kidnapping at 2:30?”
But these are near daily occurrences. The bigger pranks take more preparation, like one in the works for tomorrow afternoon. All that Freeman would divulge was, “look out for Braveheart this Saturday in Wilder Bowl at 1:30 p.m.”