After fresher’s week you should have exhausted escapades such as collecting traffic cones & roads signs and planting them throughout the halls of residence or cling filming the toilet and other such elementary pranks – what will you do for kicks now?
Have a butchers at some of these legendary uni pranks along with some braincandy to help inspire you — see if you can come up with something original, albeit without killing or injuring anybody.
We must add here, for legal reasons, this article is for comedy purposes and we will not be held responsible for any pranks and subsequent injury or losses etc.
1. Naked News Reading
On the 6th March 2010, a pair of brave, and I presume, erect nippled, students at Cambridge uni went on air for a news bulletin for the university’s’ new online TV channel, CUTV. The pair, Seb Dunnett, 20 and 21 year old so called ‘Jane Doe’, were filmed cycling the streets of Cambridge wearing only black robes. Later, the pair stripped off to read the news naked apart from a few carefully placed stickers. I wonder if they got into trouble – Cambridge University refused to comment.
2. Superman
A few days ago I saw the most amazing lecture room prank; boy sit’s in lecture theatre, his phone starts ringing and he answers, he jumps up from his seat and proceeds to rip all of his clothes off, revealing a Superman.
This sort of gag is instantly hilarious, classic, unexpected and not too disruptive – could be a nice icebreaker? If you’re planning on pulling this prank, I’d get someone to collect your clothes afterwards, well you sure ain’t going to want to go back in that lecture, on that occasion anyway.
3. Your Tricksters Tool Box
Paper, gaffa tape, post- its, balloons, staple gun etc. These are the basic essentials for the most elementary pranks; filling rooms with balloons, post-it noting everything, stapling the contents of bins to doors, taping the contents of a room to the ceiling and so on. Now, why not see what you can come up with?
4. The Cress Trick
Cress is great, it grows anywhere carpets, duvets, computer keyboards, anywhere. The trick really relies going away on holiday.
To pull it off you’ll need to remove the keyboard, acquire a similar looking one and before replacing, rip all the keys off with a screw driver, place a thin layer of cotton wool so the seeds will take, sprinkle some cress seeds around, water and replace keys.
Water daily and wait for the shock. Or similarly, and a bit harsher, you could use the same principles on your victims carpet, clothing or anything that will allow a suitable environment to sustain cress…I’ll leave it to you. Cress should easily vacuum or wash out — don’t over water or you’ll get mould or mildew.
5. Qwerty?
Another great keyboard related prank can be as simple as removing a few of the keys on a laptop, then simply switch them round in different places and wait to see how long it takes for them to notice. Don’t attempt this on laptops though, as removing keys will render the machine utterly useless i.e. it will break it.
6. The Dome
Over the pond, at MIT, Massachusetts, there have been a number of inventive student pranks involving the MIT Dome, a 15 story high, er, dome. The greatest prank involved students placing a police car right at the top. They did it by building the car piece by piece on top of the dome – that’s what you get from Ivy League tech geeks. It is now a school tradition to install all sorts of weird objects on top of the landmark, another great one was a piano.
7. High Grade Weedkiller
Another pretty straight forward prank but with such effect; find a large piece of grass, you want the bit outside in front of the uni preferably – somewhere highly visible and, under cover of dark, spray a witty phrase in large letters. It should take a few years for it to grow back to normal. If you do get caught, I guess you’ll get billed for the damage. So don’t get caught.
8. Dangle a Car off a Bridge
Another great one from across the Atlantic, this time from a group of Canadian engineering students, was staged in 2001 when a VW Beetle was left hanging on the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, stopping all traffic, cars and ships, for four hours. The inventive students did it by tying strong nylon cables to the Beetle and simply pushed it off the side leaving it dangling 100 feet above the water.
And finally, here’s a couple more you shouldn’t try…
9. The Flame Thrower
In September 2010 a couple of University of Chester students thought it would be fun to pour a bottle of strong alcohol over their friend and set him on fire. The guy, or ‘victim’ as the police referred to him, suffered severe burns and spent ten days in intensive care after the prank which was carried out on his 21st birthday celebrations. The two were arrested and handed 14 month sentences for the prank the police called, “an act of utter stupidity against a friend”.
10. Scar Tissue
In 2009, the press reported about a group of students at Exeter University who were left with permanent scarring after branding themselves at a drunken party. The group of 15 students were involved in what they called a ‘group challenge’ where they branded the initials of their halls of residence onto their arms, thighs or chest.
One unnamed student remarked that, even though they were drunk at the time, it was something they discussed sober and wanted to do as they were a close group of friends. Which begs the question, why didn’t they just pay a visit to a local tattoo parlour?
We hope that has helped those cunning, creative juices to flow — do you know of any great pranks? If so, please let us know!