Friday, May 1st, 2009
Pranks for the Memories
MIT students take pride in pulling off elaborate pranks—a tradition that has amazed spectators for many years.
By Diane Bair and Pamela Wright
WHAT DO YOU GET when you put the most gifted young techno-geeks, budding scientists and engineering wizards in the world together 24/7?
You get the best college pranks of all time.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass. (10 minutes outside of Boston), may churn out superstar scientists, but it also boasts the world’s finest pranksters. They call it “hacking” in campus parlance, and MIT students have taken it to its highest level. There are pranks and then there are MIT hacks.
These tricks leave the best minds asking not only whodunit, but primarily: how’d they do it?
Short-sheeting beds in dormitories is ordinary,” says Deborah Douglas, curator of Science and Technology for the MIT Museum, who is also in charge of documenting and archiving MIT’s hacking tradition. “But hanging an automobile on top of a building—now that takes some engineering and ingenuity.”
Ah, yes. That was the famous Campus Police Car on the Dome Hack. Anonymous tricksters placed a replica of an MIT Campus Police car on top of the school’s Great Dome, complete with a police officer dummy, flashing lights and a giant box of donuts. The Great Dome has been home to several inspired hacks, like the time it was turned into a giant beanie cap, complete with propeller. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the airplane, hackers dangled a replica of the Wright Brothers’ biplane on top of the dome; a fire truck was perched there on the fifth anniversary of 9/11.
Then there was the Harvard-Yale Football Game Hack, perhaps the most-celebrated college prank of all time. The feat was years in the making, according to the still-anonymous hackers who pulled it off. A remote-controlled weather balloon with MIT letters plastered on it popped up at midfield before selfdestructing during the game.
“It’s entered the sporting lore of both schools,” says Stephen Eschenbach, a former hacker and member of Technology Hackers Association, an informal group of past and present MIT hackers. (Members are identified by numbers to retain anonymity.) But Eschenbach’s favorite was when hackers cast an MIT class ring and attached it to John Harvard’s finger on the famous statue in Harvard Yard. “It was an elegant hack that required a lot of engineering knowledge,” he says. More recently, the statue was transformed into a character from the popular HALO 3 video game.
So why is MIT a top breeding ground for mischief makers? Part of it is tradition. “It’s what makes MIT special,” Douglas says. “Other schools have big athletic teams. We have hacking.”
It helps to have the talent pool to pull it off. “One of the things that makes MIT students special is that they’re not afraid to ignore warnings,” Douglas says. “They’ll open the box and assume they can put it back together.”
“I think what drives hackers is the need to do something that hasn’t been done, and apply engineering skills cleverly,” Eschenbach says. “The team element, risks and chance of detection also play a role.”
Hackers will explore steam tunnels, pick locks and climb around roofs in the wee hours of the morning— but they don’t want to get caught. The administration will look the other way if they don’t know who did it and if the hackers play by the rules.
The unwritten and widely respected code of ethics demands that no one gets hurt (say from an unstable roof installation falling on a passerby). The hack should also be original, Eschenbach says, “unless it’s explicitly in tribute to a famous past hack.” It can poke gentle fun, but must not harass or slander anyone—and must be able to be removed without causing permanent damage. Oftentimes detailed instructions will be left for removing the hack safely.
“Its almost like community service,” says Eric Schmiedl, an MIT senior who has been documenting hacks for the past few years, and has examined some of them up close before they were dismantled. “Its anonymous, so it’s not about personal glory. It’s about making other peoples’ days a little more fun.”
The most famous hacks are preserved by the MIT Museum (www.web.mit.edu/museum); some are permanently displayed in the campus’ whimsical Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center; and others are part of temporary exhibitions in satellite galleries. “The museum’s collection committee gets right of first refusal for removed hacks,” Douglas says. “Not everything gets accepted.”
With such impressive pranks, the bar has been set pretty high. But this is MIT, a place where challenges are met with glee. “We anticipate adding more [hacks] over time,” says Douglas, who is convinced that hacking will remain part of the campus culture. “MIT is a very intense place for students and hacking is a way of letting off steam.”
Top-Pranked School
SOMETIMES A HACK IS THE SWEETEST REVENGE.
Kudos to Caltech students who hacked MIT during MIT’s Campus Preview Weekend, when prospective students visit campus, programming a laser to spell “Caltech” on the Green Building and handing out MIT T-shirts with “Because not everyone can go to Caltech” printed on the back.
MIT retaliated by stealing the 19th-century cannon that guards the Caltech Fleming House. The nearly two-ton cannon was transported cross country, complete with fake documents which passed muster with Caltech security. Caltech sprung for the cost to retrieve the artillery. When the retrievers arrived from West Coast, MIT students invited them to a barbecue where they swapped favorite hacking stories.
