The Infamous Pranksters of Antioch College
By Nicholle Smith '06
Attention all Alumni! The Antiochian needs your assistance
in order to collect the top ten Antioch College pranks! Below
are three well-known pranks of the past. We suspect that there
are many more!
The John Seat Raid of 1953
The first well-plotted timeless prank of Antioch's history
was the John Seat Raid. It consisted of two highly organized
phases. The all-male residents of Rookery Hall schemed to
incite the campus. The plan was to strike after "Leap
Week," an old gender role-reversal tradition of Antioch.
The Rookery residents chose this time to remove all toilet
seats anticipating little interference. After identifying
the 13 raiders, acquiring necessary tools and making secrecy
pacts, the ten days of preparation were put into action.
At 1:00 AM on September 21, 1953, the Rookery Hall force
was awakened. The raiders were divided into three-man parties,
one for each floor of North. In each party one member wore
a security helmet from the College fire department, once located
in Maples, and one member carried a flashlight. This was the
group's guard and alibi for inquiries or any other mission
obstacles. The two other members of each party were armed
with a wrench and a pair of pliers for toilet seat removal.
The 13th raid member kept lookout, and had monitored habits
of Yellow Springs and campus law enforcers. Due to the lookout's
discovery of a Yellow Springs Police cruiser in view of the
entry route, an alternate entrance was quickly determined.
Less than 20 minutes from entering the all-woman's dormitory,
11 of the 12 toilet seats were procured.
Phase two began by storing the loot in a large wooden box,
cleverly topped with textbooks for camouflage. The Rookery
hall advisor Gordy Evans '55 and
Stan Corwin '58 took the chest
into Antioch Hall after receiving the all clear signal. With
the seats were two large eye screws and a heavy rope. The
pair climbed a 30-foot ladder into the attic of South Tower.
With acrobatic feats, Gordy reached the trap door with the
rope-stringed john seats. At 6:30 AM Gordy caught a sand-filled
sock attached to the toilet-seat-lined rope. The North Tower
side was secured and the Rookery Hall residents were dressed
and ready for the opening of the cafeteria by 7:00 AM. Stan's
narrative account of the raid can be read in Antiochiana.
The Dry Spell of 1955
Our next prank came from a different all-male hall, Viking,
during the autumn of 1955. Through enormous amounts of planning,
the hall devised a three-part mission to remove all the faucets
and valves from North Hall.
At 2:00 AM, the first night of discussion, two boys went
into North to draw diagrams of the bathroom, outside hall
and entrances. A third Viking resident went to check how the
faucets screwed on and off. With the architectural design
in hand, the job assignments began.
All 19 residents plus their two hall advisors continued
to plan. Each man had a specific job. Two guards were needed
on each of the three floors - they memorized the phone numbers
of the halls and their layouts. Four "plumbers"
were needed in each bathroom to remove valves and faucets.
They also needed two men to be the first to enter North Hall.
One was to guard the stairs and the other stood by the downstairs
phone and directed the operation. Once the jobs were dispersed,
the guards memorized their numbers and the "plumbers"
practiced valve and faucet removal to ensure accuracy.
These plans continued as they calculated the minimum amount
of necessary tools: three crescent wrenches, 12 pliers, 12
flat-head screwdrivers and 12 Phillips-head screwdrivers.
To ensure a clean sweep, the night watchman and policeman
were monitored a few days prior to the raid. They discovered
that they came and left North every hour on the half-hour,
thus the raid was decided to begin at 3:30 AM. Warning signals
were a series of knocks, tested by another 2:00 AM excursion
to North, making sure the light knocking would be audible
through the walls. The system went as follows: 2 knocks -
girl coming from east end; 3 knocks - girl coming from west
end; 4 knocks - general alarm, both sides be alert and get
into shower; and 1 knock - all clear.
On Thursday November 10, 1955 the Viking Hall put a subtle
statement of warning centered on the bottom of the front page
in the Record declaring, "Dry spell expected in the North."
For the first part of the plan, they arranged seven entry
trips into North beginning at 3:30 AM. Each route was different
to avoid attracting suspicion. The entire entry component
took only 12 minutes. At 4:30 AM on November 11 1955, 21 men
were in North Hall.
The next phase was valve/faucet removal. All valves were
removed from the showers, then from the sinks. A single bathroom
totaled four showers and 24 valves. By 4:55 AM the hall was
void of men and nearly all of the water supply access (they
forgot the laundry basin faucet).
The final stage of replacement did not turn out to be as
humorous as originally fancied. However, by request the men
began around 4:30 PM to end the dry spell, finishing before
6:00 PM - 13 hours after completing the "Dry Run."
In total, for lost parts and maintenance review of the work,
Viking owed Antioch College $18.19. A participant, Stephen
Schwerner '60 provided a narrative of "Dry Run"
in his term paper for Historical Western Civilization, also
available in Antiochiana.
The Mysterious Auk of the 1960s
Finally, the mysterious Auk ranks on our list. In the 1960s,
strange bird-like footprints were reported across the campus.
They were attributed to The Auk, an extinct flightless bird.
His or her or its footprints were spotted in buildings, leading
to holes and crevices much too small for a bird his size,
and despite his inability to fly they were spotted in high
places. These prints were seen on campus for many terms, possibly
a couple years, until the Auk met his demise. In a public
space on campus, the footprints led to a large exhaust fan
from which feathers had been expelled. With no eyewitness
accounts, not much else is available regarding the Auk. 
Please submit your tales of Antioch pranks
to alumni@antioch-college.edu.
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