Last January, Re Scott got a phone call from a number he didn’t recognize. When he answered, a woman he didn’t know said something about being an operator for a replay program. The Topeka junior was confused.

Then she asked a question: Who would win in a fight: Johnny Lawrence, the leader of Cobra Kai and the teen nemesis of Daniel LaRusso in Karate Kid, or Biff Tannen, the guy who bullies around Marty McFly in the Back to the Future series? Scott started laughing. He knew he’d been pranked.

Along with cheap beer, bad pick-up lines and late-night pizza, pranks are a hallmark of college night life. They range from harmless phone calls to elaborate stunts. And whether they’re offensive charades or innocent fun, pranks let us vent our inner mischief.

Scott’s friend pranked him using a free online calling program called IP-Relay, which allows deaf people to place telephone calls over the Internet by typing to an anonymous relay operator, who then makes the call. Calls placed with the program come from an unknown number, which allows pranksters to avoid caller-IDs. While clever, the prank has a flip side. Due to pranks through IP-Relay, deaf people who use the service are experiencing a higher rate of hang-ups by people who assume they’re receiving a prank call.

Prank calls aren’t the most popular of college hijinks, says Amir Blumenfeld, a senior writer for the Web site CollegeHumor.com, which receives hundreds of photo and video submissions from college students each week. The number one prank in college today, he says, is shaming — using a marker to draw on someone who is passed out. In second place is the dorm door obstruction prank, which involves blocking someone’s door with anything from liquid-filled cups to phone books. Third is the surprise wake-up prank. Blumenfeld says he has seen this prank range from waking someone with a megaphone to filling an entire room with loud disco music, strobe lights and erratic dancers.

Prank etiquette dictates that nobody sustains physical harm or injury, Blumenfeld says. “Markers are temporary, and eyebrows have about a three-month grow-back period,” he says.

But how much compassion can someone expect from jokesters? Not much, Blumenfeld says. “We used to think there were boundaries and regional rules, like you are safe if you’re in your bed. But there are no rules. Even in our own beds nothing is sacred.”

For Scott, the prank call recipient, the only rules for pranking are that you don’t intend to hurt someone and that if you’re going to dish it out, you should be prepared to get it back. “Keying someone’s car is just mean,” he says. “A prank is something you can do to bust your friends without being hateful.”

The elements of a good prank, Scott says, involve humor, creativity and surprise. The more original, the better. V. Vale, author of the book Pranks, agrees — to some extent.

Vale takes a philosophical approach to pranks. For him, pranks don’t involve victimizing other people. Instead, they are harmless ways to point out irony and problems in society. They need to be humorous, convey an anti-authoritarian message and involve a poetic image. He says the best prank he recently saw involved a billboard mocking Abercrombie and Fitch advertisements. “We’re more in favor of pranks that perpetuate some sort of surrealist image or subvert authority,” he says.

Vale traces the origin of pranks to the legend of the trickster archetype that is present in many early cultures. He says the trickster functioned to give people a wake-up call whenever they were just floating through life. Today, modern tricksters serve the same purpose. “It’s in our nature,” Vale says. “Many pranks are crimes of opportunity.”

Indeed, sometimes there is a thin line between a prank and a crime. There is no legal definition for pranks, but firecrackers in a dorm could be construed as arson, egging a house could be criminal damage to property, and shaming (depending on intent and how physical it is) could be construed as battery, says Sally Kelsey, a general practice attorney for the Law Offices of Donald G. Strole, 16 E. 13th St. But most pranks are intended to annoy rather than inflict harm, she says. Kelsey says she has only seen a few cases tried that involved pranks gone awry.

John Frydman, a Lawrence criminal attorney, says police usually know when something is intended to be a prank. “This is a college town. They’ll understand the fine line,” he says.

But remember, just because a line exists doesn’t mean your prankster friends won’t cross it. “Pranks are funny until somebody gets hurt,” says Blumenfeld, the College Humor writer. “Then they get really funny.”

THE GREATEST COLLEGE PRANK OF ALL TIME

THE ROSE BOWL HOAX OF 1961

Although college students have pulled innumerable pranks, general consensus among prank Web sites and books maintains that the Rose Bowl hoax of 1961 is the best college prank ever accomplished. On January 2, 1961, NBC televised the Rose Bowl football game between the Minnesota Golden Gophers and the Washington Huskies. At halftime, Washington’s cheerleaders prepared to lead Washington fans through a huge flip-card show that would produce giant images. Each fan had been given a large card and a personalized instruction sheet.

When the cheerleaders gave the signal, the fans were supposed to flip their cards according to the instruction sheets. As cameras televised the halftime show across the nation, the cheerleaders began to signal the audience. The first few images went according to plan, but then the word SEIKSUH appeared — HUSKIES spelled backwards. Assuming this was just an incidental flaw, the cheerleaders gave the next signal. But instead of a giant image of Washington’s mascot — the husky — a giant buck-toothed animal appeared. The cheerleaders quickly signaled for the next image. As the crowd flipped the cards, everyone grew silent. The cards above Washington’s fans read: CALTECH. Fourteen students from the Pasadena technical college had managed to infiltrate the Washington cheerleaders’ hotel room and replace all the instruction cards the night before the game. Variants of this prank have been accomplished since 1961, but it was the Rose Bowl hoax that set the stage for all elaborate college pranks to come.

Source: www.museumofhoaxes.com