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ND Alumni Association

If you haven’t been to alumni reunion weekend, you’re missing something. A master’s degree, by the looks of the printed program.

This year’s was 35 pages long and listed about 75 seminars. There were sessions on investing in global and emerging markets, cultivating your child’s sensitivity, sharing your faith, human rights in China, divorced Catholics, the three rules and seven steps to high positive energy, deep serenity and inner stability. You could converse with gangsters from Chicago housing projects or join an open forum on Notre Dame athletics. Learn about how to stop a conspiracy to market deviant sexuality and abortion to our children and grandchildren, or how to buy a PC.

I’m a bad alumnus — which is to say, not one — and didn’t take advantage of any of those growth and enrichment opportunities. Instead I sneaked into a session called "College Pranks 101."

It was led by Loretta Murray, a 1991 ND graduate who came from Norfolk, Virginia, clutching enough index cards with facts on the history of pranks on college campuses to make a doctoral defense. (She’s also hoping to compile a book of Notre Dame pranks — so e-mail her at Loretta800@aol.com if you know any she might not have heard about.) One of the best she detailed occurred in 1879 at the University of Kansas. After witnessing an impressive memorial service on campus for a deceased faculty member, two students selected the name of a regent who lived out of town and sent college administrators a telegram from the town informing them of the man’s demise. The university duly observed the man’s passing with another impressive service before it was discovered that the regent was still alive.

Alumni also were invited to share memories of their favorite Notre Dame pranks. And though Pranks 101 didn't attract a large crowd (it was up against such sessions as "E-Commerce and Beyond" and "You Can Thrive! Joy is Your Birthright"), a few memorable escapades were recalled.

Like the day some years ago when an unusually long line formed at the orange juice dispenser in one of dining halls. It turned out someone had secretly lifted the dome-style lid off the dispenser and poured in a bottle of vodka. It was now dispensing screwdrivers.

An alum described the practice of hollowing out a loaf of bread and filling the cavity with cayenne pepper or some other incendiary condiment (I can’t remember), creating what was termed "the loaf of fury." More recently a favored dining hall prank has been to put a bowl of Parmesan cheese in a microwave oven, set the timer for 10 minutes and leave. This literally created a big stink a couple of years ago.

A Lyons Hall alum from the early 1970s recalled what was not precisely a prank but a darn good idea. For the all-campus tug-of-war at An Tostal one year the hall rented an elephant from a circus in Peru, Indiana. Nothing in the rules said anything against elephants pulling for your side.

Interdorm rivalries like Alumni-Dillon have long spawned pranks over the years. One man recalled how residents of a rival dorm coated Sorin Hall’s new black plastic toilet seats with black shoe polish.

This being a Catholic university, it was perhaps inevitable to hear a confession. An alumna admitted that she and a friend were the ones who poured entire bottles of dishwashing liquid into Stonehenge, less well known as the Clarke Memorial Fountain, some years ago. The resulting mountains of bubbles and foam took days to clear from the pipes.

"Please don’t print my name," this co-conspirator later implored of me. "I’m afraid they might take away my diploma."

The recall of my own diploma, from Ohio University, is not something I have to worry about, at least not on the grounds of my role in pranks. It’s true my roommate and I inherited a pirated cable TV connection to our apartment, which delivered undeserved HBO to our nine-inch black-and-white set. I did often consider calling the local cable outfit and complaining that we hadn’t received our monthly guide in months! but I never did.

The only prank I can remember clearly occurred sophomore year, and it was completely spontaneous. There were two phone exchanges in our little college town of Athens, Ohio — 593 and 594. The phone number for the local Domino’s pizza was 594-4495, which the Domino’s ads often reminded people was the same thing forward as backward.

By chance, the phone number in our dorm room that year was 593-3395, also the same thing forward as back. Naturally, we occasionally received calls for Domino’s. We patiently advised the callers of their mistake and gave them the right number.

Except one night. I took their order.

"About 20 minutes," I can hear myself promising.

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