The Brown & White

Everyone loves a great prank. Whether you're the one doing the pranking, or the one getting pranked, those involved usually end up with a smile on their face. And the really great ones never fail to end with a good laugh.

It doesn't matter whether it was the simplest April Fool's joke or a time-consuming, day-changing trick. Whatever the prank and whoever pulled it, you know that you'll remember it for a very long time.

Fraternities are often a hot spot for pranksters.

Kiran Thomas, '09 and a member of Sigma Chi fraternity, remembered a great prank they played on a brother in his house.

"During a snowstorm, one of my friends built a snowman right in the middle of another kid's bed," Thomas said.

The snowman was 3-feet tall and complete with a scarf, sunglasses and a carrot nose.

Obviously, the brother couldn't sleep in his bed that night.

"So in retaliation [he] Saran-wrapped the snowman builder's entire room," Thomas said. "I mean everything, around the bed and covers, around the bureau, around the wardrobe. The entire room was wrapped and covered in Saran Wrap."

Similar pranks have occurred on the hill.

When Stu Schnabolk, '09, returned to campus after Pacing Break in October he found everything in his room wrapped in tin foil.

Apparently his fraternity brothers that stayed on campus were bored over the weekend, they even went was far as to individually wrap all the pens in his desk drawer.

But pulling pranks isn't just limited to upperclassmen in fraternities. Freshmen and sports teams have also been known to get in on the action.

Sean Cleary, '11, said one of the most memorable pranks he and his friends have played was on two women in his freshmen hall.

"I think the biggest thing we've done is switch all the furniture and exchange them between two girls' rooms," Cleary said. "We carried one of the girl's mattress, dresser, desk, chair, all her clothes, computer, everything, into the room across the hall and switched it all with another girl's."

Cleary said that the women didn't know what to do when they first saw their rooms.

"At first I don't think they really thought it was real, and they had no idea how to react they just kind of went along with it for a day or two, and I guess tried to ignore it and play it off," he said. "They tried to pretend that nothing had happened and it was perfectly normal just not to make a scene."

Eric Harper, '10, and a member of the Crew team, said the team occasionally pulls pranks on each other.

"Last year, this kid had quit the team but we wanted him to come back. So me and my buddy Pat went to his room in [McClintic-Marshall House] and found him lying in bed," Harper said. "So we grabbed him and carried him all the way from M&M to Campus Square where we take the vans to the boathouse. He was like squirming and screaming the entire time that we were carrying him down the hill. Everyone got a kick out of it when they saw us come by Neville [Hall], carrying him by his legs and arms."

Pranks are far from a new phenomenon on college campuses and Lehigh students have been pranking for generations.

Several alumni said they have fond memories of harmless tricks that got a good laugh out of their buddies.

Gregory Kuklinski, '98, said in an e-mail that in 1995 he had a class in a room with two televisions.

One day, he turned on the TV in the middle of class using his remote control watch, a new technology that was all the rage in the mid-90s.

When "The Price is Right" came on the screen, the professor questioned why the other TV wasn't on and kept on teaching.

Five minutes later, when Kuklinski turned the TV off, again using his remote control watch, the professor continued to teach and the entire class was hysterical laughing.

Karen Fischer, '99, said in an e-mail that she and her friends in Taylor Residential College used to pull tricks on each other all the time.

One time, Fischer said they filled an entire room with balloons, to the point of bursting.

Another time, Fischer said she and her roommate took the metal walls off an old bathroom stall and installed it in the center of someone's bedroom."

Another alum, Anne Boig, '07, said in an e-mail one of the most memorable pranks she encountered at Lehigh happened to her fiancé.

"This prank wasn't pulled by me, but it involved Bryan Jones '05, my fiancé," she said. "He and his roommate Dave Frisch, '06, were away at a club baseball game in the spring of 2005 and when they returned to Delta Phi [fraternity], their entire room had been tin foiled. Like every DVD, the mattresses, their toothbrushes ... everything!"

So what makes a prank memorable?

Well it has to be better than the old tying the shoelaces together trick. It also has to have good intentions, with no serious risk involved.

Thomas said originality is the key to a successful and memorable prank.

It shouldn't be something you got from watching TV, Thomas said. The prank should also be well-deserved, he said.

"I mean a prank is only good if the person you are playing it on deserves it, I'm not one to get off on making someone's life miserable for no reason," Thomas said. "And execution. If you're going to pull one, you have to see it through the entire way."

Harper said for a prank to be successful it shouldn't have any bad intentions.

"Well first it has to have good intentions, like everyone involved has to in the end think that it's funny," Harper said. "Because if the person you do it to gets hurt or mad, than it's not really that memorable.

Jordan Seiferas, '09, said that a prank shouldn't be too dangerous or leave serious damage.

"It just has to be something that doesn't leave permanent damage, and allows the pranked person to laugh at it after some time," he said.

And why do guys seem to pull pranks more often than girls do?

"I think guys are risk takers by nature," Cleary said. "And playing pranks is a less serious type of risk."