Pranks in BYU Housing

[NerdGirl]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/69012/

Okay, so I lived in on campus housing at BYU for three years and was an RA for one of those years. And I lived in on campus housing at another school in Canada for four years and know people who have been RAs at quite a few different schools and we've had some interesting discussions about this. And I just have to say for those who don't know that BYU on campus housing basically lets people get away with murder compared to most other schools that I know about. There were pranks people played at BYU that resulted in an incident report and basically nothing else that would have gotten them arrested and kicked out of housing at other schools. Also, lock yourself out in the BYU dorms? Just get your RA to let you back in! Don't worry if it's 3 in the morning - just knock on all of their doors until you wake one up! (Unless that's changed since I was there.) Lock yourself out at other schools? Go to the main security desk and fill out a form and show some ID and pay a hundred bucks and they'll let you back in. Start a fire in the microwave by accident in the BYU dorms? That's okay! It was an accident! Start a fire in the microwave by accident in other dorms? That's a $300 fine!

Maybe if you're into pranks and stuff you should actually be glad that BYU treats you like you're in middle school rather than treating you like an adult criminal.

[NerdGirl]

And I just thought of one more thing to be thankful for in BYU housing - you don't have to be scared to go to the basement at night because no one's getting stabbed down there.

[TheBlackSheep]

I have had many similar conversations with my differently-schooled RA friends.

And as a former RA myself, I have no sympathy for this kid, especially since nothing will happen to him, probably. And I kind of have a PhD in sympathy. I was RA during the Great Newspaper Incident, and my best friend was RA over the Great Pooping Goose Incident, so guess who got to help clean up frightened goose diarrhea at 3 AM? Someone with an early class and exams and a job the next day but who loved her friend. And who wrote way more incident reports afterward.

[Defy V]

I have had many similar conversations with my differently-schooled RA friends.

And as a former RA myself, I have no sympathy for this kid, especially since nothing will happen to him, probably. And I kind of have a PhD in sympathy. I was RA during the Great Newspaper Incident, and my best friend was RA over the Great Pooping Goose Incident, so guess who got to help clean up frightened goose diarrhea at 3 AM? Someone with an early class and exams and a job the next day but who loved her friend. And who wrote way more incident reports afterward.

That was my hall! I slept through it all and was so annoyed with all the screaming that morning. I'm sorry you had to deal with it.

[Defy V]

I just read my last post and noticed a slight contradiction. What I meant is that I tried to sleep through it all. I didn't go out in the hall to see the fuss, though now I sort of wish I would have.

You're a good friend, TBS, to have helped with that.

[NerdGirl]

Yeah, stealing wildlife and releasing it in the dorms would have you looking for a new place to live at most schools and probably getting to know your friendly neighborhood police officers.

[Unit of Energy]

I was super annoyed at the prank wars my freshman year between my roommates and the boys in our ward. It ended after the boys stole our front door and our RA called their RA to deal with the issue.

[Yog in Neverland]

I was super annoyed at the prank wars my freshman year between my roommates and the boys in our ward. It ended after the boys stole our front door and our RA called their RA to deal with the issue.

STOLE your FRONT DOOR? Uhmmmm.... That's awful. And super unsafe.

Our apartment never had any prank problems because I lived with a bunch of girls who fought *all the time* with themselves and everyone knew it, and didn't want to get them madder than they already eternally were.

[yayfulness]

Really, pranks are awesome when both the pranker and the pranked are happy to participate and there are no externalities. Start violating any of those conditions and they get really annoying really fast.

[Marduk]

Really, pranks are awesome

I've never thought so. Honestly, I find them quite juvenile.

[bobtheenchantedone]

I just really, really hate looking stupid, so a prank on me is likely to leave me in tears or at the very least grumpy.

[Imogen]

April Fool's Day at Vassar always sucked for other people. One year, all the shower curtains got stolen out of all the dorms, but my dorm had shower stall with doors, so no big deal for me. The NEXT year someone stole all the toothebrushes people left in the bathrooms (even the electric ones) and stuck them in the quad. I had moved my shower caddy into my room a few weeks before because someone stole my body wash, so you can imagine my relief that i still had a toothbrush.

[Katya]

Really, pranks are awesome

I've never thought so. Honestly, I find them quite juvenile.

I likewise have trouble seeing the appeal.

[Digit]

Working in the secret base at Los Alamos, [Nobel Physicist Richard] Feynman would often feel bored due to the lack of any social activities. Hence, he learned to crack safes and pick combination locks. In one of Feynman’s pranks, he found the combination to a locked filing cabinet by trying the numbers a physicist would use (it was 27-18-28 after the base of natural logarithms, e=2.71828…). On finding that the three filing cabinets in which a colleague kept a comprehensive set of atomic bomb research notes all had the same combination, he left a series of mischievous notes as a prank, which initially spooked his colleague into thinking a spy or saboteur had actually gained access to atomic bomb secrets. He would also find a corner of the base to play Red Indian drums, which led to the spreading of a rumor that a ghost drummer called ‘Injun Joe’ haunted the base.

source

[Dead Cat]

Eh, I prefer Feynman's door prank, with his psych evaluation a close second.

[NerdGirl]

I think pranks can be funny if they don't require massive clean-up afterwards, they don't publicly embarrass people or injure people or things, and you know the person well enough to know that they aren't going to react badly. Like the time my dad sent me an adult diaper with an unwrapped chocolate bar inside it in a ziplock bag in the mail. That was funny. But the time we were staying at a hotel for one of my brother's hockey tournaments and one of the kids on another team put several unwrapped chocolate bars in the pool so that it looked like there was a lot of poop in there and massive chaos ensued, not so funny.

[NerdGirl]

And I really love Feynman's door prank, especially how he's telling people the whole time that he was the one who took the door.

[krebscout]

You guys have got me watching Feynman videos on youtube.

[Digit]

One of my favorite books is Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces. They are two separate books but I got the bound-in-one version.

[Katya]

I think pranks can be funny if they don't require massive clean-up afterwards, they don't publicly embarrass people or injure people or things, and you know the person well enough to know that they aren't going to react badly.

Yeah, I can concede that. I do enjoy messing with people's heads, but I don't like majorly inconveniencing people.