Some people believe the line between a serious violation and a harmless prank may be as simple as one, two, three, four...

College authorities and city police were stumped. Weeks of investigation had unearthed no evidence to account for the missing College safe--a safe that protected student grades that would determine who did and did not graduate in May.

It was 1911, during the early days when Pomona College boasted only four buildings, ivy had not yet started to grow on campus, and students still called Mount Baldy "Mount San Antonio."

In those days, Holmes Hall, a grand building topped with a bell tower, housed the College administration, including the Office of the Dean. It was a time of lingering Victorian ethics and "gracious living," but concealed beneath that reserved façade was a healthy streak of irreverence.

In the spring of that year, while the sophomore class was enjoying a picnic in San Antonio Canyon, two boys slipped away and returned to campus. Without a sound, they sneaked into the dean's office in Holmes Hall and put the polishing touches on a vanishing act that would make history--literally.

Frank Brackett chronicled the tale of "The Lost Safe" in his history of Pomona College, Granite and Sagebrush. "One day it disappeared, simply vanished without leaving a trace," Brackett wrote. Weeks went by, and despite all efforts, the safe went unaccounted for until a professor, walking over the spot where the safe had been, noticed a little squeak in the floor. Kneeling down to investigate, he found the linoleum had been cut. After removing the loose piece, he pulled out the cut floorboards below and dug a bit into the dirt to uncover the "stolen" safe. Like Poe's purloined letter, it had been right there all along.

It was not until after the culprits graduated that their secret was revealed: Arthur "Toochey" Payne '13 and George Merritt '13, both sophomores at the time, had used the sophomore picnic as an alibi. Once they established their presence there, they slipped away. Everything had been prepared in the office ahead of time--the floor cut and the hole dug--so they had only to roll the safe over the hole and lower it into the earth. They replaced the flooring and returned to their friends; then, most likely with great effort, they kept their mouths shut and watched.

Like a few other transcendent pranks over the years, it was the stuff of legend. Claire Gillette '38 remembers his father, William Gillette '11, telling the story of the missing safe. "I used to think that he made it all up until I read about it in Brackett's book," says Gillette today. "I have a hunch that my dad knew the boys who did it."

"Pomona has a great tradition of pranks," says Steve Ringle '69. Most alumni and faculty, in fact, take a slightly perverse pride in that tradition. There are, of course, the pranks that are so traditional as to have become trite--such as "pennying" a friend's dorm room door shut or dumping laundry soap in Bixby fountain, a practice still not encouraged by the maintenance staff. Then there's retaliatory pranksterism--such as the lore of Professor Nelson Smith's pranks in the Chemistry Department--a sort of bloodless feud for which no one can remember the origin or the cause. There are communicative pranks that resemble small works of art, like the addition of Frank Zappa's name to the wall of composers on Big Bridges. And then there are the big-ticket pranks--the mothers of all pranks--that cause all real and would-be pranksters to doff their hats in admiration.

Of course, without the proper environment for pranksterism, such goings-on would not have been so well regarded. Professor Wayne Steinmetz believes pranks serve as an outlet for students who are under pressure to perform in an academic atmosphere.

Students concur. "Everything was kinda serious on campus," says Greg Pine '95. "It's not a super-serious place, and the weather helps, but it's not a playful place either."

Many alumni and students cite the secret society of Mufti, with its witty criticisms, as the backbone of prankishness. "The present survival of Mufti on campus and the clandestine practice of their messages sets the stage and provides a thread of tradition against which all other pranks can be hung, like on a clothesline," Ringle theorizes. In short, he says, the presence of Mufti sanctions other covert actions. Without Mufti, there is no stage for the humorous outlet that pranks provide.

But where Mufti is sometimes controversial (See Quest for Mufti, page 33), pranks are innocuous. At least, they're supposed to be, according to Ringle's self-authored "Rules of a Good Prank."

Rule #1: A good prank shows ingenuity, problem-solving, and spirit.

"The theory is that if you can do something that gets a tremendous amount of attention, that's creative and not damaging, then you've pulled off a great prank," says Jake Oken-Berg '02, the current ASPC President. But a truly great prank is also one that is remembered vividly 20 or even 50 years later.

Imagine, for instance, walking into Frary Dining Hall on a morning like any other, feeling hungry and bleary-eyed and a bit blasé. That's how Frank Albinder '80 felt as he entered the hall for breakfast on a morning in 1978. "I remember thinking, 'Oh well, another day in Frary.'" But when the door opened, what confronted him wasn't just the familiar Orozco mural of Prometheus. It was a surreal vision worthy of Magritte. Hanging from the rafters overhead, sails set and framed with Pomona blue, was a genuine 13-foot sailboat.

"It was a truly dramatic sight," recalls Michael Brazil '79, one of the authors of this memorable vision. "The symmetrical, blue-edged white triangle of the sails was framed by the rafters of Frary with Prometheus in the background." As he speaks, it's clear he can still see it, as can most of the students who saw it that day.

The idea for "The Flying Sailboat" occurred to Brazil and his friends while they were sitting at lunch one day. Eyeing the floor tiles and the wood panels on the walls, the group measured the hall and decided that the plan would most certainly work. After dinner, one brave soul stayed hidden in a small closet in Frary and opened the door to the others later in the evening. After the heavy wooden tables of Frary were stacked up against one wall in a most precarious way, the boat was carried in. Then, engaging the pitching arm of the Sagehens' first-string pitcher, the ropes were slung over the rafters. The boat was hoisted up into the air, and, as a final touch, Brazil attached a friend's campaign poster to the keel, which, he contends, "eventually secured the guy the position of senior class president."

Later, when asked how he and his friends accomplished it, Brazil said that he would turn the question back on the inquirer, asking how they thought it could have been done. "I didn't want to answer people about how we did it. I wanted to stimulate their creative thinking," he said. "I saw people around me who were very smart, and they didn't realize it, they didn't realize what they could do. I wanted to challenge them to use some of that."

Rule #2: A good prank requires teamwork, organization, and planning.

"Pranks are creative projects that teach you to work together," says Nick Winslow '64. "They breed creativity and teamwork."

A 1966 antic wherein some students propped the College's traditional 30-foot Christmas tree at the top of Smith Tower could not have happened without teamwork, admits Steve Ringle. "We sat around in someone's dorm room and blocked out who was going to do what when."

Three teams were assigned: one to get into Frary, another to get into the tower, and a third to serve as lookouts.

On the day that the tree arrived at Frary, the teams set out. With perfect timing that night, Team One got into the hall and hurriedly wrapped ropes around the tree to protect the branches, then, at the cue from Team Three in the courtyard, they tiptoed (as best one can tiptoe carrying a 30-foot Douglas fir) from Frary to the base of Smith Tower. In the meantime, Team Two at the tower had affixed a system of two-by-fours and pulleys and cantilevered it out over the top edge. Ropes were dropped to the ground and tied to the tree, then the pulling began.

"Maybe the tree was too heavy or too close to the tower, but the guys up top needed help," says Ringle. So, with an additional back or two, the tree was finally heaved to the top and placed upright on its stand. The pulleys and ropes were removed, and the teams scattered back to their dorm rooms. "In all, it took about 45 minutes," Ringle speculates.

The next morning, it took people a little while to find the tree in its new perch. Once it was spotted, the College jumped into action. Ringle recalls that it looked like the grounds crew was trying to raise a circus tent with all the equipment they had. "We took a particularly perverse delight in watching them struggle with that tree all day."

In the end, the tree arrived almost unscathed in Frary Hall and was decorated just a day late. "You'd never have known it had taken a detour," said Ringle.

Rule #3: A good prank causes no permanent or irreversible damage or harm.

Halloween was approaching, and the air was rife with frolic. "We were all sitting around talking," recalls Greg Pine '95, "and the idea just struck." So they decided to remove the mathematics faculty offices from Millikan Laboratory. Trick or treat.

Pine and two classmates, Johanna Hardin '95 and Asha Gilson (Pitzer '95), spent all night in the quiet halls of Millikan executing their plan. Hardin explains that the layout of the faculty offices affords only two doors into the main hallway: one enters into a lounge from which all the faculty offices can be reached, and the other is a "back door" to a single faculty office. After removing the door to the lounge and hiding it inside, they taped up a piece of drywall that had been carefully cut to fit the doorframe and painted it to match the existing wall paint. "We even texturized it to make it seamless," said Pine. With that done, they placed a strip of matching wallboard at the base of the new piece, completing the illusion. Tired and giddy, they left for the night.

Hardin and Gilson arrived at Millikan early the next morning to watch the results of their prank.

One by one, as each faculty member arrived, they'd pull out their keys to unlock the door, then in their "pre-coffee" state, they'd pass up the hidden doorway altogether. Confused, they'd turn around and pass it again going the other way. "The joke grew as everyone called people to come over to see it," says Pine.

In the end, all the professors found their way into their offices through the remaining back door, and the fake wall stayed up for a few days to allow people, including President Peter Stanley, to enjoy the merriment.

"Prank ideas were mainly practical jokes, and usually involved damaging something," laments Pine. "But we made sure that no damage was done with our prank. We wanted to do something that wouldn't cause big problems for the school but that was creative."

For the Chemistry Department, damage to property was sometimes the least of concerns, especially during the days of R. Nelson Smith '38, professor of chemistry from 1945 to 1982. Chemistry faculty were constantly on the lookout for Smith's outrageous pranks, which included a flock of pigeons set loose during a lecture by colleague Conway Pierce, bagpipe accompaniment for Donald McIntyre's inaugural lecture, and new office décor for Corwin Hansch--complete with a porcelain toilet for his desk chair. Revenge was inevitable though not always sweet since Smith had a keen eye for thwarting the pranks aimed at him.

Smith's enthusiasm for pranks was infectious. Students even jumped into the fray with pranks on professors. Jack Quinlan and Fred Grieman sometimes came to work to find their offices turned topsy-turvy--all the furniture upside down, or even in Quinlan's case, furniture replaced by a single gerbil and its food dish.

But the line between prank and practical joke is easily blurred. Winslow argues that a prank stays on the safe side of the line between harmless and harmful. "We all did it to each other," he says. "If you got had, you got had. But you knew to never do anything to somebody that would really hurt them."

A notorious "panty raid" committed in 1962 exists in that questionable ether. Upon the return of the undefeated College Bowl team, a gathering welcomed them back to campus. However, some jokers had figured out how to switch off the lights all over campus, leaving the cheering crowd in complete darkness at the Coop.

"Suddenly there were three or four hundred guys milling around," Winslow explains, "and someone yelled 'Panty Raid!' And the entire male student body ran to south campus and blitzed everything. It was clearly a Pomona job--no one got hurt and nothing malicious was done." The male students even added a new "considerate" twist to the maligned prank: they returned the stolen sundries to the women students via a pick-up box.

Rule #4: A good prank requires stealth, covert action, and discretion after the fact.

Some learn this rule the hard way.

In 1942, on the eve of a football game at the University of Redlands, some spirited Sagehens drove out to the Redlands campus. With black market gasoline they poured the outline of a giant "P" on the Redlands football field.

David PonTell '46 recalls the clincher, "I lit a match, torched the gasoline, and it seemed as if the whole field was aflame."

With their mark left, the group headed back to Pomona. Unfortunately, PonTell left the plans--with the names of the pranksters--behind on the field at Redlands. His cohorts, Al Hastings '47 and Alex Thorburn '47, remember the repercussions. "Our group was summoned to Dean Nichols' office for a 'discussion,'" they recall in a co-written letter. Learning that the Redlands dean had passed along the names on the plans to Nichols, the boys were a little nervous. Luckily, their fears were allayed. "Dean Nichols scared us a bit, but really laughed at the prank."

Their true "punishment" came in the form of creative retaliation by the Redlands team. "That afternoon we drove to Redlands for the game, and there it was, our burned "P" for all to see. But the ingenious Redlands students had simply added the necessary slant mark to turn the 'P' into an 'R,'" write Hastings and Thorburn.

Other pranksters take "discretion" to heart. At a memorial service for William Russell, professor of music and choir conductor, Frank Albinder '80 finally confessed to a prank he helped to pull almost 20 years before. Some seniors placed strings of lights in the greenery over the organ in Little Bridges and with some stealth, made the lights blink to the rhythm of Handel's Messiah during the Christmas concert. Russell was oblivious to the whole escapade since it happened above his head.

"He never knew what happened," Albinder says.

Lamenting the apparent dearth of truly inventive prankish behavior from today's students, Winslow points to a time when he wondered if things had changed too much to ever revive the lively pranksterism of his day. About 15 years after he graduated, he was back on campus having lunch with former Pomona Dean of Students Shelton Beatty in Frary Dining Hall. Beatty was asking him who was behind some of the early 1960s pranks.

"This was a time when streaking was popular," notes Winslow. "Suddenly a naked couple went streaking through the dining hall, and Shelton looked over and in his famous unflappable way, said, 'My, my, how things have changed.'"

--Sarah Dolinar