From changing the Emerson “Home of Men” sign to “Homo Men” to putting a goose in a rival floor’s bathroom, pranks have been a large part of the Biola student experience over the past years.
Vanguard students came to the Biola campus early last Thursday morning and posted signs around campus telling students there was no school until Monday due to an illness that supposedly had spread across campus. Freshman Lindsey Manus said that the signs were posted early morning between 3 and 5 a.m.
“If [the illness] really did happen that would have been scary… like influenza or something,” freshman Maylin Rowe said.
Manus, sophomore Pablo Guerrero and a couple of others in Hart Hall said they were up at 5 a.m. on Thursday finishing their art projects in the lobby when two other Biola students walked into the lobby and asked if they had seen the signs posted around campus. The two students showed the art majors the huge stack of flyers they had taken down.
“The signs were all over Hope and Stewart,” Manus said. “They had the little Biola logo on it. It looked totally legit.”
One of her friends missed one of his classes because of the signs. Even the Registrar’s office sent out an email at 10:46 a.m. telling students to ignore the signs.
“Please be advised: Early Thursday morning, pranksters posted signs on campus indicating that classes were canceled today through Monday due to a campus health problem. However, this is incorrect. Classes will continue as normal,” the email said.
The pranksters remained anonymous until students saw what had happened to the Fluor Fountain. According to Guerrero the words “Vanguard was here” were written on the ground with chalk, and there were bubbles in the fountain. The fountain has been a target for pranksters for many years.
“We’ve had people a couple of times write stuff in the Fluor Fountain and burn the motor up [which results in] hundreds of dollars in damage,” Campus Safety Chief Jerry Powell said.
However, the Vanguard prank is not the only one that has been seen on Biola’s campus recently. The men’s third floor in Hope North, The Corps, was a victim of pranksters who live right across the building from them.
The huge sign that identifies their floor was stolen.
While the guys were on a floor retreat, the girls on the third floor south of Hope Hall planned something “to just have fun.” Senior Sara Dickinson started the escapade.
“I go over there and Sara is holding up the sign for fun, and that’s when I came in and helped her,” sophomore Lindsey Senna said. “We hid it in one of the dorms on our floor.”
This is no big deal to the guys on the third floor because it happens almost every year. Last year, the residents of the fourth floor in Horton North stole the sign and this year most of the guys on the floor are oblivious of who took it.
“We don’t know who stole it,” sophomore Corps resident Kyle Jones said. “We have a few ideas, but not sure on anything.”
Campus Safety as well as the girls’ Resident Director (RD) Krista Hegenbart came to Senna and Dickinson’s room later that morning to ask them some questions.
“We just felt like doing a prank,” Dickinson said. “We just did it for fun.”
“Fun” may not sound so amusing when they pay for the consequences.
“We don’t call them pranks,” Powell said. “We call them vandalism.”
However, according to Powell, Campus Safety decided not to pursue this prank. Instead the RDs decided to handle it themselves.
The Corps residents had to store the sign in a room on the floor so it would not be stolen again. The sign was remounted by Facility Services and is now screwed tightly on the wall so it can’t be taken down.
Powell has seen his fair share of pranks on Biola’s campus.
“We had signs taken from here and taken to Azusa Pacific Univeristy (APU) and [they] said: Biola Property Only,” Powell said.
For the fun of it, Biola might prank rival schools, but when our rivals prank us, we think of the damage done and rethink about the dangers of pranks, which can be dangerous and risky.
