Pranks

Described in such colorful terms as “mischief,” “practical jokes,” “amusements” and “deviltry,” Trinity students have enjoyed pranks throughout the College's history. In the History of Trinity College, Glenn Weaver describes that Trinity had varied kinds of students, but that it was the “roisterers…who set the tone of the College.”

Parody and Crudity (1823-1860)

Those “roisterers” were most often the wealthiest students from Episcopal families. President "Old Pynch" Pynchon reported in 1878 that “all the more wealthy students” were “all those who especially required control.”

Beginning in the 1820s, students created entertainment for themselves through rituals like the Burial or Burning of the Conic Sections, where students held a mock funeral for their least favorite mathematics textbook, or the Grand Tribunal, a mock court system comprised of upperclassmen in order to keep the underclassmen in line and which constituted hazing.

Parody was a favorite theme among pranksters. During the Junior Exhibition, an oratory and debate competition which began in 1826 in front of a public crowd in the College Chapel, the sophomores distributed mock programs “which represented the ultimate in sophomoric crudity,” and in 1853, a group of five students were “rusticated for the remainder of the term for instigating a parody on Junior Exhibitions.”

Robert Tomes, Class of 1835, described how commonplace “mischief” was enjoyed by students:

These, few as they were in number, were quite equal to the occasion, and the college scrape flourished as vigorously in the young and puny Washington College as among its older and sturdier contemporaries. Hazing and smoking of freshmen, blocking up chapel doors and breaking locks, infecting recitation-rooms and rendering them uninhabitable, barring out president and professors, transferring tin signs and sign -boards from town shops to college walls, and other ancient observances were duly honored. The roisterers quorum pars magna fui, as I am bound to confess in this frank revelation of myself, were a small but very effective band, and, while we were doing no good to ourselves, did much mischief and gave great torment to others.

Tomes also describes the exhibitions, and how it was an annual tradition for the “wag of the class” to give a “humorous valedictory” at commencements.

During the 1859 Commencement Ceremony, the freshmen stood up and parodied the exercises, to the amusement of alumni and students and chagrin of the faculty. The faculty ordered the students to their rooms, but “the performers ignored the order and were encouraged to continue by the Alumni present, who declared the parody to be 'harmless and innocent.'” In the end, President Eliot backed the faculty and chastised the students.

According to Weaver, “in a way, some of the undergraduate deviltry was a form of 'letting off steam' in the days before organized sports absorbed so much of the collegians' energies. But only in a way, for the decade of the 1850s was the period in which collegiate athletics began at Trinity.” The administration, meanwhile, typically disciplined but abided the pranks, as they believed the College would still turn out “model young gentlemen.”

The Old Spirit of Prankishness (1861-1878)

The arrival of John Barrett Kerfoot in 1864 “without doubt, marked the College's lowest point in student discipline.” Students plugged keyholes, tied doors shut with ropes, and blatantly disobeyed orders. The amount of pranking was so severe that Kerfoot considered resigning. “At the end of the last term (June, 1864) the students had turned in so many false fire alarms that the College and city authorities had forced the students to go to the office of the Hartford Chief of Police and sign a bond pledging orderly behavior for the future.” ¹⁾

Still, the pranks continued – many to the chagrin of faculty, administration, and even other students.

An 1868 Tablet entry describes a professor, finding the keyhole to the recitation room plugged, making the entire class recite in a freezing cold room. Or, students rang the College bell in the middle of the night. The bell, which was the bane of students, was also once turned upside-down and filled with water which froze overnight. James Williams, having no bell to ring the students to morning Chapel, walked the dormitories with a hand bell instead. Another student stole the janitor's wheelbarrow, not realizing he was watching from the upper floors of one of the buildings.

Some pranks seem to be a conglomeration of the same story, passed through legend, or various copycat pranks, like the moving of carts and animals into the upper levels of College buildings: “Tradition tells us of a class not long since graduated, that elevated a cow to the President's recitation room; of another that placed a heavy dump-cart in the same position, and of another still, that arranged all the furniture of the same room in front of the chapel, in the most artistic manner.”

The students stole also, allegedly, carts of hay and left them inside the chapel ²⁾. In perhaps the same but altered story, the students filled the aisles of the chapel with hay bales, much to the chagrin of the janitorial staff: “James Williams would doubtless recall the morning when he discovered, to his surprise, and later to his regret, the aisles filled to the top of the pews with hay! its removal and the complete obliteration of its traces calling for hard work on his part.” ³⁾

A Tablet article tells of bored students who, observing a horse and potato cart left unattended on the College grounds, guided the horse up into the Chapel before disassembling and reassembling the entire cart, filled with potatoes, in the belfry. The owner, baffled, ran around the College grounds until he realized his horse was looking at him from the belfry window.

On another occasion the pranksters played havoc with the official weather report. Since 1846, the College had operated a weather station from which Professor Brocklesby reported weekly to the local press on such matters as daily rainfall, hours of sunshine, temperature, etc. ⁴⁾ According to legend (and Bishop Williams' memories) students took advantage of a severe thunderstorm to fill Professor Brocklesby's rain-measuring instruments with water, so that the next morning Brocklesby believed he had recorded the “greatest fall of water of which he had ever heard.”⁵⁾ Williams supposedly had seen the students running back and forth from the rain instruments, but kept their secret.

While President Smith was on leave of absence, the students posted a “For Sale or To Rent” sign on the President's House.

Charles Frederick Johnson was the Professor of English at Trinity and nicknamed “Boo-Hoo.” Though a favorite of the students, they still played tricks – like stealing quizzes off his desk while another student distracted him, or setting six alarm clocks to go off at once. Professor Johnson, however, found these pranks amusing.

In May 1868, students stole park benches (“settees”) from the City (Bushnell) Park and hid them on the roof of one of the College buildings. The Park Commissioners who were sent to retrieve the benches were locked onto the roof, but eventually were able to recover them. They returned the benches in two batches, and when the second batch was brought back to the park, they discovered that the ones they had originally returned were missing again. At some point, all the benches eventually reappeared in their rightful places.

An old skeleton, perhaps a teaching apparatus from the Cabinet, was the source of inspiration for pranks, poetry, and creative writing; in 1869, a passage in the Tablet states: “Our much abused skeleton will take his annual climb in November.” Charles Wright Freeland, Class of 1881, wrote in his personal diary on December 6, 1877: A skeleton was suspended over the chapel porch this morning between 2 and 4 o'clock. To its legs was tied a plackard with the following words on one side, “he tried to collect $5.00. 'Why did he die'?” and on the other the figures “'81.” Report says that five of the class of '81 were the perpetrators of the deed. The attic door and stairway in Seabury Hall were also stopped up with books, boxes, etc. Beneath the entry, Freeland has written his own name, along with Geo S. Huntington, Harlow C Curtiss, Edward O. Newton, and W.B. Nelson, possibly naming the responsible students. Four of the names appear next to the Greek letters ΦΚ, denoting them as members of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, Phi Kappa Chapter. The February 2, 1878 Tablet details how Franklin and Adolphus, two buildings and grounds workers in the employ of the College alongside James Williams, removed the skeleton by smashing it to pieces. Freeland notes on December 10, 1877 that another skeleton was hung “as before” over the Chapel porch, “and the bell-rope carried off entire. The attic stairway was also barricaded. The work was done between the hours of 12 p.m. and 5 a.m. The skeleton and bolts were removed and a new bell-rope substituted, before morning chapel. But the organ-bellows were cut, and so Rev. Prof Hart had the pleasure of singing wholly by himself. The gas-pipes were stopped up with putty, which was not discovered until late in the afternoon–too late, indeed, to remedy the matter; and so '81 procured for the college a cut from chapel, which hasn't been done since 1873.” Beneath this entry, Freeland writes his own name, Geo S. Huntington, Ed. P. Newton, Harlow S. Curtiss, Herbert Wilmerding, Adolph Reineman, and John Dow Cheever.

Eventually, the disorder calmed until 1880, when a student stole the College Book of Rules from the President's office. The skeleton too is mentioned again in 1880, in a potentially fictional story where students are “eager now to hang the much-abused college skeleton from one of those two exciting protuberances which jut out so invitingly from the middle sections of the new Trinity,” but they cannot find the skeleton. Hearing a ghastly voice in the darkness, the students are told [by the skeleton] that though they tried to make sport of it, it is Halloween night, and so the joke is on them!

The 1877-1878 academic year was an especially disruptive one.

Simultaneously, students faced the last term on their beloved campus as well as an increasingly strict faculty hell-bent on enforcing student conduct. On Friday, March 1, 1878, the students went on a rampage. The college bell was taken down and all sorts of depredations were committed. The next day, Saturday, all of the College “cut” Chapel and the three lower classes absented themselves from all recitations. That afternoon the entire student body marched through the town singing and a few days later, when the college bell had been returned to its place atop old Seabury Hall, the students silenced that noble old instrument by filling it with a mixture of plaster of Paris and nails.⁶⁾.

When the faculty responded by taking away the students' scholarships, the Freshmen engaged in a forbidden hat rush, for which they were fined $5.00, and they “retaliated with all sorts of pranks – building bonfires, ringing the college bell, and tearing down the college bulletin board.”

Wholesome, Boyish Practical Jokes (1879-Present)

Various entries for the Trinity Tablet featured creative writing and poetry exercises centered on college pranks, stories of pranks at other schools, and advisements for pranking (or not), as one 1894 anonymous author wrote that they hoped Commencement would “be free from all desecration by thoughtless college pranks.” Likewise, an editorial to the March 16, 1898 Tablet states that “it is the popular opinion that the meaning of the term, 'the best class in college,' when used in connection with the Lemon Squeezer, is the class that does the most mischief.” In the following issue, the anonymous author (Class of 1870) apologized for making that claim.

On May 2, 1903, a letter to the editor appeared in the Tablet by “A Recent Graduate.” In it, he advised that each class “must do something absurd,” as “who does not delight to tell of the pranks he played when an undergraduate?”

The editorial describes several mischievous acts: “the class of 18– led an innocent calf to the top of Northam and then…left the janitors to lead it down again,” and “Of course you have heard what the famous class of ' 70 did to keep up the good old traditions of the place, and how the mighty class of '93 rolled a giant iron hoop up and down the College walk and finally dropped it upon the unsuspecting heads of 'Pigville.'”

Citing examples from Princeton and Harvard, he warns that the pranks should not veer into the realm of vandalization or destruction of private property, of which people “have no particular admiration” and are deserving of punishment. Instead, they ought to remain “wholesome, boyish practical jokes.”

Following the blessing of the building by The Right Rev. Walter H. Gray Hon. '41 , Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut and a trustee of the College, the small metal box, containing copies of all the remarks and certain other memorabilia, was placed in the cavity in the wall adjacent to the Center and the cornerstone, bearing the date of “1967” which President Jacobs had earlier explained was the original completion date, was securely cemented into place. For posterity it should be noted that the event was not without a student (presumed) prank. Sometime during the night before, the cavity was neatly and quite professionally filled with cement. Had not Walter E. Carlson, director of buildings and grounds, been alert on the morning of the 6th, there could have been some embarrassment. ⁷⁾.

in a mock groundbreaking ceremony, kazoo band entertained (Mather Hall - 1983 Reporter)

Today, the Tripod staff publishes the Liepod, or annual satirical issue for April Fool's Day.