Pranks at York and Elsewhere

Pranks at York and Elsewhere

Pranks are a long-running tradition at most universities. They provide a way to build school spirit, to relieve stress, and to leave a parting message or monument that is seen by other students after the pranking class graduates.

York University's Engineering and Science departments are young enough and small enough not to have done much yet, but as pranks happen, they'll be added to this web page when I hear about them.

Enjoy!

Pranking Code

(Full discussion here.)

There is no official "Pranking Code". However, the most successful pranks I've seen have respected the following guidelines, and pranks breaking them tend to fail in bad ways:

Don't damage anything.

Don't steal anything. ("Borrowing" is sometimes ok. See discussion.)
Don't be blatantly offensive.
Clean up any mess.
Nobody gets hurt.

Pranks obeying these guidelines usually involve building something, moving something to a strange location, or redecorating something. The more creative the prank, the better, usually.

Pranks at York University

2008:

Mike was away for about a week during the summer. In his absence, spiders were busy.

2007:

Professor Hornsey returned from vacation to find that his office had been remodelled. There seems to be a bit of this going around...

York Pranks Elsewhere

Pranks Other People Did

University of Toronto:

The Clock Caper. The non-working clock face on the Mechanical Building was covered by a digital clock that blinked "12:00".
The Concrete Sofa. Civil Engineering is famous for having far too many concrete-related courses. Naturally, when building a sofa, it would be the material of choice.
The Tower of Cans. Students in the ECE department drink a lot of soda. The result was a 3-storey-tall tower of cans in the atrium of the Sandford Fleming building.
The F!rosh Playground. First-year students produced the best prank in recent memory when they turned the Sandford Fleming building's atrium into a playground.

Updated 19 August 2008.