The California Institute of Technology may be the most famous pranking college in history, thanks to a combination of workaholic over-achievers, and a more urgent need for stress relief than a nuclear reactor vessel full of Oprah Winfrey guests. These excellent ingredients are improved by current Assistant VP for Student Affairs, Tom Mannion, who supports prank culture and has actually ordered campus security not to interfere with pranks without his express permission.
This makes Caltech a pranksters' paradise, and justly so: the school is actually the inspiration for Real Genius's "Pacific Tech", and when you've inspired the best college movie of all time (the climax is pranking the military-industrial complex with a flying laser and a houseful of popcorn), you'd better keep that tradition alive.
1. Caltech IS Hollywood
Caltech Pranking Lesson 1: Aim High.
Caltech Pranking Lesson 2: Caltech is better than you.
In 1987, Caltech students marked Hollywood's hundredth anniversary by converting the famous Hollywood sign (yes, the actual "on the side of that hill" one) to spell a significantly smarter location. Since Hollywood would already be giving itself plenty of praise, Caltech students simply embarrassed every college on the planet by getting more attention with some old sheets than most could with an exploding particle accelerator.
2. Anti-MIT-Shirts
The Caltech-MIT rivalry is the stuff successful stunts are made of, both spectacular and snide, and this is definitely the latter. An undercover Caltech team visited MIT while prospective students were touring the campus. There they infiltrated the organised events and gave out T-shirts saying "MIT" on the front. And if you just asked "what about the back?", you're smarter than an MIT wannabe:
POSTSCRIPT: MIT got great revenge, stealing Caltech's Fleming Cannon and transporting it (with a white surrender flag) to their own campus...
...(You do know these universities are on opposite sides of the damn country, right?)...
... before accompanying it with clothing considerably more attention-grabbing than the T-shirts.
More photos for those who are turned on by smart chicks in bikinis
BONUS BRILLIANCE: Howe & Ser Moving Company issued a mock press release about their role in the prank, describing themselves as "assertive, low-key, and really willing to go the extra 3,000 miles to ensure a bang-up job." It's details like these that really make a prank blow up.
3. The Great Rose Bowl Hoax
An article about Caltech without the Great Rose Bowl Hoax is like a Niel Armstrong autobiography without the moon stuff. One of the most famous pranks of all time, with "Great" built right into the title, it was an immense exercise in planning, sabotage and supreme self-restraint.
In 1961 they didn't have Prince-themed electronic pendants and social networking; they had cardboard. At halftime, the audience would be directed by cheerleaders to raise and rotate large "flip-cards" to reveal messages -- because when a squad of teen cheerleaders are in charge, men will do anything.
Caltech's now-infamous "Fiendish Fourteen" deployed an agent to the hotel where the cheerleaders were staying and -- displaying incredible self-control and an immunity to background saxophone music -- didn't engage in unbelievable dialogue leading to vigorous exercise. Instead, he slipped away with one of the instruction sheets intended for audience members. The team then printed more, and altered all two thousand three hundred and two flip-cards by hand to encode new instructions.
The results were incredible, timeless, and televised. With access to an unwitting army of over two thousand people, they didn't blow it all on a single foul image (thereby proving that the internet hadn't been invented yet), but instead subtly altered the intended images so that the cameras wouldn't look away. Eleven of the fourteen images were left alone, the twelfth slightly shifted the original Washington Husky image into the Caltech Beaver, the thirteenth reversed the intended message (another error intended to make cameramen hesitant to pull away), then the fourteenth and final flip-picture proudly proclaimed "Caltech" to an entranced audience.
Read it and weep.
If you enjoyed this article, please check out the other schools in ZUG's College Prank League: Yale and University of Michigan.
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