It started my freshman year when I snuck out of Morrison and threw eggs at a boys’ dorm. The reason for the operation was so vitally important that I cannot for the life of me remember why we did it. That covert operation triggered the college-prank area of my brain. Fortunately many pranks that went on at NNU while I was there were more creative than chucking eggs.
Water balloons were frequently launched into the courtyard of the ancient and fabled Morrison Hall. A pygmy pig was let loose in Ford Hall sometime in the 1997-98 school year. The president’s portrait was borrowed from the Ad building and pictures of it, in various locations, were “misguidedly” (as the editor now claims) published in The Crusader. The trinity statue and the clock somehow became showcases for things such as a Christmas tree, and a dummy sitting on a toilet reading The Crusader.
One year all the shower curtains on the girls’ side of Ford Hall disappeared; they didn’t return until four years later, when they showed up spread out as big as a billboard way up on the side of Ford with a message for the senior girls on them.
On the less-public scene, there were of course the standard relocating of things like students’ personal belongings into places such as the lobby; the rock garden from the front of the dorm relocated onto the RAs bed; a student’s personal effects taped all over dorm walls. Of course there were the obligatory and disgusting dead animal pranks, as well as the slightly less disgusting streaking episodes. My favorite was when I entered my door to find hundreds of Dixie cups half full of water neatly arranged on the tile floor of our gigantic Morrison room.
The NNU campus was perhaps a bit small for pulling off an amazingly public prank while retaining total anonymity. But NNU was perfect for causing a bit of a stir while students speculated about which group could have pulled the latest prank and administrators argued over consequences. Those who succeeded in retaining anonymity can fantasize over the way their pranks are whispered about by Alumni. I know no one is whispering about my freshman year egging. I’m pretty sure no one even noticed.
