Pranks: funny and not-so-funny

We have been "entertained" locally by the story of five Monmouth College girls who got it into their head that it would be funny to move the Holy Family from the square to the residence of Monmouth College president Mauri Ditzler. The local authorities have thought it less funny.

This prompted me to reflect on pranks of the past and why we are quicker to condemn them today than we once were. First of all, there is the question of definition. Acts that are relatively harmless and funny should not be lumped with those that are designed to cause harm or hurt. Among the latter I would put voting in the other party's primary, with the intent of saddling them with an impossible candidate. Some think this merely a good joke, with the laudable intent of giving the country the best possible president. I see it as political vandalism, much like stealing campaign signs.

Those of us who remember Nixon's dirty tricks see this practice as undermining our political process. For those too young to remember, this began as a series of "pranks" such as ordering pizzas for a rally, then letting the Democrats figure out how to pay for them. Nixon was vaguely aware of most of this, and when it crossed the line, like proposing to rent a yacht at the Democratic convention in Miami, then staff it with prostitutes and take photos, he said to forget it.

Watergate, in contrast, had no connection with pranks at all — it was an illegal intelligence gathering operation from the beginning.

After the Watergate Scandal became public, Nixon's chief of staff, Bob Haldeman reportedly turned to Tuck and said, "You started all of this." Tuck replied, "Yeah, Bob but you guys ran it into the ground."

Most pranks have no political context — like the five sorority sisters mentioned above. Sometimes pranks border on malicious, like the Monmouth fraternity boys who retaliated on a neighbor who complained about their noise by stealing his Christmas lights; and the more he complained, the more lights they took.

Sometimes they are just stupid, like the college boys who harvested a Christmas tree downtown, then dragged it back to campus, only to be promptly arrested by the policemen who had followed the trail in the snow.

Occasionally pranks have consequences. The boys who arranged for a skeleton to be lowered over President Tom McMichael while he was addressing students in chapel learned that it was a big mistake to have borrowed an incomplete skeleton — Mrs. McMichael had had a leg amputated, and the president assumed (probably incorrectly) that this was a reference to her. They were promptly expelled.

No such fate awaited those boys who unscrewed all the seats in the auditorium and remounted them facing backward. It was an expensive prank in one sense — it took the Green Army days to put things right.

A cow was gotten down from the college cupola rather faster than that, but lowering it over the edge of the roof was a strain on both bovine and human nerves. Everyone who hears this story has one quick question, "How did they get the cow up there?" No one is quite sure, but there may have been a stairway; and while a cow may go up a stairs, if you ask it to go down, it will just stare at you.