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What pranks did you, or your roommates pull off when you were a student at PSU?

Jerademan74

Jerademan74

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I was at Penn State in the early 70's when streaking was en vogue. My Beaver Hall room mate, Joe T., was the King of Streaking! He also was the King of Pranking others such as:
1. Putting blue shoe polish on the phone ear pieces in the hallways and calling someone to tell them that they have black shoe polish on their ears.
2. Putting toothpaste in a match box, lighting it on fire, and pushing it under the door. The toothpaste would explode and make quite a mess!
3. Peeing in a trash can and then leaning the can against the outside of a door, knock on the door and run like hell!
 
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Jerademan74 said:
I was at Penn State in the early 70's when streaking was en vogue. My Beaver Hall room mate, Joe T., was the King of Streaking! He also was the King of Pranking others such as:
1. Putting blue shoe polish on the phone ear pieces in the hallways and calling someone to tell them that they have black shoe polish on their ears.
2. Putting toothpaste in a match box, lighting it on fire, and pushing it under the door. The toothpaste would explode and make quite a mess!
3. Peeing in a trash can and then leaning the can against the outside of a door, knock on the door and run like hell!
Click to expand...
The first two you listed are fine, but the last one means your roommate was a dick and by extension so are you. How could you have possibly thought this was ok? The guys on my dorm floor would have beaten the living crap out of him...you too.
 
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Jerademan74 said:
I was at Penn State in the early 70's when streaking was en vogue. My Beaver Hall room mate, Joe T., was the King of Streaking! He also was the King of Pranking others such as:
1. Putting blue shoe polish on the phone ear pieces in the hallways and calling someone to tell them that they have black shoe polish on their ears.
2. Putting toothpaste in a match box, lighting it on fire, and pushing it under the door. The toothpaste would explode and make quite a mess!
3. Peeing in a trash can and then leaning the can against the outside of a door, knock on the door and run like hell!
Click to expand...
I was also there in the 70s. Lived in 509 Hartranft. We use to have floor wars where we would fill a 32 gallon trash can with water, lean it up against the elevator doors and push the button for the floor of our supposed enemy...floor 2. One day someone added tide when they attacked the 6th floor and a gigantic slip and slide broke out. That was actually a lot of fun. Then there was the stand by everyone did.....penny a guy in their room. Jam pennies in the doorway so they can't get out. Then call them. The phones were out in the
hall. One ring meant your room....two rings meant the room next to yours. Of course you would just let the phone right and ring and ring. They couldn't get out to answer the phone. There were more but these were the "Classics".
 
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A guy on the 8th floor in Beaver Hall had a 35 pound iron weight disc- he'd take it into a stairwell and spin it one edge like you can do with a quarter- as it slowed down and started to wobble toward a resting position, it made it sound like the whole building was coming down. Damnedest thing I ever heard, I think.
 
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I lived in Sproul in East Halls. Late one night we went to the farms across the road and took a cow....walked it all the way across campus to a girls dorm in west halls and put the cow in an elevator and sent it up. Couldn't believe we never got spotted by LE. There may have been alcohol involved.
 
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Putting tin cans in the clothes drier on another dorm floor was always fun. It only cost a dime.

In 1968, there was a Russian pianist performing in Schwab Auditorium. Before anyone was allowed in, a bunch of us dressed up as ushers but hid chains under our jackets. We chained all the side doors shut, then marched out and chained the front door. (We left a note for the few people locked inside with a key to open the doors in case of an emergency.) I think that was the last time the school ever sanctioned "Prank Night."
 
Moving the the Lion Shrine statue in the Union Building to the lobby of our dorm (Behrend) ....
 
MarkPSU said:
I lived in Sproul in East Halls. Late one night we went to the farms across the road and took a cow....walked it all the way across campus to a girls dorm in west halls and put the cow in an elevator and sent it up. Couldn't believe we never got spotted by LE. There may have been alcohol involved.
Click to expand...

LOL.
 
Agoodnap said:
The first two you listed are fine, but the last one means your roommate was a dick and by extension so are you. How could you have possibly thought this was ok? The guys on my dorm floor would have beaten the living crap out of him...you too.
Click to expand...
Well, #3 was only done once, and it was to get back at someone who pulled off a dick move against us that was even worse than what he (we) did!
 
Living in Hamilton ( West Halls) we flooded our hallway and mixed with soap suds then proceeded to have sliding contests while our RA was away... Needless to say... We got in a little trouble...
 
psuro said:
Night putting -with the daughter of the Dean.
Click to expand...

i044744.jpg
 
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The thing I remember but was never involved in directly was jamming quarters between a room door and the outside door frame in East Halls. With enough quarters, a person in the dorm room couldn't open the door.
 
Jerademan74 said:
I was at Penn State in the early 70's when streaking was en vogue. My Beaver Hall room mate, Joe T., was the King of Streaking! He also was the King of Pranking others such as:
1. Putting blue shoe polish on the phone ear pieces in the hallways and calling someone to tell them that they have black shoe polish on their ears.
2. Putting toothpaste in a match box, lighting it on fire, and pushing it under the door. The toothpaste would explode and make quite a mess!
3. Peeing in a trash can and then leaning the can against the outside of a door, knock on the door and run like hell!
Click to expand...
Jerademan74 said:
I was at Penn State in the early 70's when streaking was en vogue. My Beaver Hall room mate, Joe T., was the King of Streaking! He also was the King of Pranking others such as:
1. Putting blue shoe polish on the phone ear pieces in the hallways and calling someone to tell them that they have black shoe polish on their ears.
2. Putting toothpaste in a match box, lighting it on fire, and pushing it under the door. The toothpaste would explode and make quite a mess!
3. Peeing in a trash can and then leaning the can against the outside of a door, knock on the door and run like hell!
Click to expand...
 
In the days when the phones were out in the hall across from your dorm room (1 ring in one dorm room and 2 rings for the one next door) my roommate came up with our own phone prank. I discovered that the small black cap off the container for spare pencil leads needed for a scripto thin lead mechanical pencil fit perfectly under the receiver hook of the wall phone in the hall, holding it down while being pretty much invisible. We put the cap in place and my roommate got on the phone and pretended to be having a phone conversation while I went across the way to the parallel hallway and called the room next to ours that shared the phone. One of the guys came out what the phone ringing in his room but he couldn't figure out how to answer it with someone already talking on it. He was getting ready to get the RA when my roommate couldn't hold back anymore and started laughing. Obviously the guy in the room next door figured out he was being pranked but didn't know how until we let him in on the secret. We then proceeded to go down the hall and started pranking multiple dorm rooms.

Later in the year a very gullible 2 year degree ag mech major ended up on our floor. So we decided add a little more to our prank. So we got someone to call the next phone down the hall from his leaving the receiver hook jammed in the up position placing the receiver back on the hook so that there was a live caller on the line. When the guy came out of his room to answer his phone and was trying to figure out why his phone was ringing but someone was already on it, the guy pretending to be talking on his phone told the ag mech major to just go down the hall and answer his call there. And of course there was somebody on the other end of that line for him to talk to since we had set it up that way. It worked like a charm and we let the poor guy graduate without ever telling him he had been duped. He left Penn State thinking that is how the phones worked. Unfortunately the next year the jig was up on us since they ended up installing phones in each individual dorm room.
 
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One day during a big snowstorm, some guys on my floor decided it would be funny to completely bury another guy's car with snow. So they procured some snow shovels and trudged up to the North lot do the deed. The car in question was a 1966 Ford Galaxie convertible and probably still had the original top. The guys completed the mission and returned to the dorm (Porter Hall in Pollacks). A few days later the owner of the car went to retrieve it and found it not only buried and snow, but that the top had collapsed and the interior was completely filled with snow as well. He wasn't amused.
 
BobPSU92 said:
The thing I remember but was never involved in directly was jamming quarters between a room door and the outside door frame in East Halls. With enough quarters, a person in the dorm room couldn't open the door.
Click to expand...

Worked in West Halls as well. We called it "pennied in". Tape a couple of pennies together and you can't get out. Just need to make sure you put them below the deadbolt, otherwise when you got enough people pulling on the door the pennies would drop into the bolt and you have to remove the door to get out.
 
Jerademan74 said:
I was at Penn State in the early 70's when streaking was en vogue. My Beaver Hall room mate, Joe T., was the King of Streaking! He also was the King of Pranking others such as:
1. Putting blue shoe polish on the phone ear pieces in the hallways and calling someone to tell them that they have black shoe polish on their ears.
2. Putting toothpaste in a match box, lighting it on fire, and pushing it under the door. The toothpaste would explode and make quite a mess!
3. Peeing in a trash can and then leaning the can against the outside of a door, knock on the door and run like hell!
Click to expand...

Which floor were you on?
 
Jerademan74 said:
I was at Penn State in the early 70's when streaking was en vogue. My Beaver Hall room mate, Joe T., was the King of Streaking! He also was the King of Pranking others such as:
1. Putting blue shoe polish on the phone ear pieces in the hallways and calling someone to tell them that they have black shoe polish on their ears.
2. Putting toothpaste in a match box, lighting it on fire, and pushing it under the door. The toothpaste would explode and make quite a mess!
3. Peeing in a trash can and then leaning the can against the outside of a door, knock on the door and run like hell!
Click to expand...
I was in North Halls my freshman year. We used to take a golf ball and throw it down as hard as we could against the floor. The golf ball would bounce several times between the floor and ceiling. Everybody on the floor could hear it but couldn't determine where it was coming from.
 
Late one night some friends and I stacked paper cups floor to ceiling outside a guys door (his roomate was away) and when the guy came out the next morning the cups fell all over him. I was wild and crazy then.:D
 
Summer semester 1967, men were in South Halls, which fall-to-spring was all women. All the furniture -- beds, desks, chairs -- were movable.

One freshman forgot to lock his room, so we moved all his furniture out. When he got back we heard a scream, so we all came running out "to find out what happened." I told him maybe he forgot to pay his tuition and housing bill. Others came up with other reasons why it appeared he had been evicted. We told him to go see the RA (who lived on another floor).

As soon as he disappeared, we moved all the furniture back, put a shirt on his desk chair and opened a book and placed it on his bed.

When he returned, the RA saw the room full of furniture, stared at the kid like he was crazy and left without saying a word.

By the way South Halls was "interesting". The shower heads were much lower than in the men's dorms, there were no urinals and there were tampon machines on the bathroom walls.
 
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Jerademan74 said:
I was at Penn State in the early 70's when streaking was en vogue. My Beaver Hall room mate, Joe T., was the King of Streaking! He also was the King of Pranking others such as:
1. Putting blue shoe polish on the phone ear pieces in the hallways and calling someone to tell them that they have black shoe polish on their ears.
2. Putting toothpaste in a match box, lighting it on fire, and pushing it under the door. The toothpaste would explode and make quite a mess!
3. Peeing in a trash can and then leaning the can against the outside of a door, knock on the door and run like hell!
Click to expand...
I was there in the late 70s and lived in Beaver. i seem to remember having someone lean a pee filled garbage can against pur door.....thanks
 
Was a guy that lived in Beaver the year before I got there that was thrown out of the dorms for his pranks but he would come up to visit and play cards. He would mix some concoction into the lid from a can of chewin tabbacky that would smoke like crazy when lit. He would slide it under the door of some intended target and laugh when they came out coughing.

One day he did this to a guy at the other end of the hall at 1 AM but didn't know the guy was in the shower so the room was empty. He also didn't know that the guy had a terry clothe robe hanging on the inside of his door. The smoke bomb caught the robe on fire. No one wanted to hit fire alarm so they were filing trash cans with water to throw on it while others went to every floor in dorm grabbing fire extinguishers. I woke up just as they got the fire out. Room was completely blackened by smoke and door was destroyed.

Did I mention that it was our new RA's first night on duty? We had had a meeting and had convinced him we weren't really that bad...it was the guys that lived here the year prior...and he actually believed us lolol

Gets better. The campus police investigated but no one would tell who did it. They told the guy that lived there he would be responsible for damages. Guy that did it felt bad and wanted to minimize the damages so about a week later the two of them decided to repaint the room during the night when no one was around. But the campus police saw a light on in the room they had sealed off so they came up and arrested them for destroying evidence! Both paid some pretty big fines but neither were thrown out of school.

Sometimes pranks don't go exactly as planned......:rolleyes:
 
Jerademan74 said:
I was at Penn State in the early 70's when streaking was en vogue. My Beaver Hall room mate, Joe T., was the King of Streaking! He also was the King of Pranking others such as:
1. Putting blue shoe polish on the phone ear pieces in the hallways and calling someone to tell them that they have black shoe polish on their ears.
2. Putting toothpaste in a match box, lighting it on fire, and pushing it under the door. The toothpaste would explode and make quite a mess!
3. Peeing in a trash can and then leaning the can against the outside of a door, knock on the door and run like hell!
Click to expand...

All I am going to say is that it was coined "Tequila night"......
 
Pennies jammed between the door and frame.

Baby powder with a hairdryer under dorm doors.

Firecrackers and bottle rockets under the door as well. Got in trouble for that ....
 
My randomly assigned roommate went into college heights with his frat (Delta Chi) and stole everyone's holiday decorations for the parties at their frat. He also stole nitrous oxide tanks from dentists offices and then sold entry into our dorm room where he'd put a wet towel under the door and flood the room with the gas. A total Jersey douchebag. I got the hell out of there after fall semester.
 
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Hopefully all of you will get to see the movie titled Prank Night. I co-wrote it with Daniel Roebuck. It's a Halloween movie based on our Prank Night tricks when we were teens in a small town in PA. Think the exorcist meets final destination. It is in pre-production in Hollywood.
 
We found out that there were only do many different keys. Armed with that knowledge we stole a person's door for a few nights over a weekend. We also stole mattresses a few times. Made it interesting when people started pounding on doors to figure out where the mattresses were
 
My brother lived in Hartranft '69-'72. He got pennied in and almost missed a final. Was eyeing his sheets trying to calculate how far he'd still have to jump if he tied them together and went out the window. Luckily, someone let him out. One Thanksgiving break, a guy in his hall put raw liver on the heater in another guy's room. When they returned, my brother said the smell was horrendous. They used to put shaving cream inside an album cover, slide it under a door and step on it....blew the shaving cream everywhere. He lived in the old Nittany Barracks his senior year and kids would throw cherry bombs in the toilets constantly.

I lived in Ritner mid-70's. We developed a "survey" that we would conduct on any guy we wanted more info on. Looked up the guy's name in the directory of all students names and called them saying it was for a class. Found out very personal info on guys one of was interested in dating. Guys in one of the upper floors in Beaver would play Wipeout on speakers facing out the windows and everyone knew that meant they had flooded the halls and were body surfing naked. Surprised no one mentioned stretching Saran Wrap over the toilets. We also painted our roommates bars of soap with clear nail polish. If you did a good job, the soap was sealed and would not lather.
 
Hanging condoms filled with shaving cream On the door knob of the dorm fink. Squirting lighter fluid under the door lighting it pounding on the door s screaming fire. Enjoying the results when the door was pulled open and the condom swung into the room and off of the door knob.
We were reported to the Dean of men for using balloons to harass him.
As a point of interest condoms were illegal at the time.
 
did any of you get accused of being mean to your roommate and take it to Federal Court to resolve the dispute?

Just wondering..
 
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