April Fools' Day 2014: Campus pranks are alive and well

Squatters were found in President Gutmann's bathroom.

It’s April Fools’ Day.  And to celebrate this annual rite of spring, college publications have been busy cooking up pranks—some funnier and more thoughtful than others:

Colgate University announced that it would open a graduate school of dentistry (see video).  “We conducted an incisive review of our curriculum,” said President Jeffrey Herbst.  Provost and dean of faculty Douglas Hicks added, “When you’re in the dentist’s chair, do you want a doctor who makes small talk about the weather, or do you want a Colgate-trained dentist who can wax eloquent on current events and ancient philosophy?”

The GW Hatchet at George Washington University reports Bravo will soon make GW the first college in the country with its own reality show based on widely publicized bickering among faculty and administrators.  “The producer said the mega-network’s interested was piqued once GW’s fourth dean was pushed out of a job in as many years.”

Northeastern University’s campus paper announced that the school will now have paths for students to safely text and walk.  “To handle sit­u­a­tions in which text-​​and-​​walkers are wearing head­phones or show no signs of stop­ping, vol­un­teers will also be dis­patched with air horns and buckets of con­fetti to use at their discretion.”

Clearly marked satirical, a headline from The Pitt News announced that four Student Government Board members resigned because “SGB is just flat-out not a cool thing to do anymore.”  Referring to the fact that only 10 students had competed in the 2014 election for eight board member positions, one student remarked that board members had undertaken a “pretty big social risk in the fall by running for election to a Board that no one really wanted to be on.”

NYU’s Washington Square News reports that NYU Residential Life and Housing Services will open the Astor Place Cube as a freshman residence hall for the 2014-15 school year.  “The Cube, as the hall will be known, will provide housing for 50-75 students in one common area.”

The Guilford College Goofordian  reveals that the Early College Program is actually a front for a campus-based drug ring.  “According to one parent, who asked to remain anonymous, there is an organized system of distributors that coincides with carpooling."

In Philadelphia, the Daily Pennsylvanian  discovered three students squatting in President Gutmann’s bathroom where they were running a business.  “The squatters did not sign up for meal plans because they found the leftover food from Gutmann’s many parties to be sufficient.”

Further west, the University of Nebraska’s “Daily Halfasskan” issue announced the discovery of an ancient campus located in Lincoln, Nebraska.  According to a university explorer, “We were passing through territory we thought had previously been mapped out, but to our shock, there was an entire campus there.”

And finally, check out the Daily Cardinal Action Project produced by students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  The second edition of this project “attempts to take a 360 degree look at a college experience” and covers everything from drug fixes to how to market yourself on Facebook. 

Profane, mean and sometimes a little libelous, campus satire isn't dead yet.