Over the past few weeks, the university has dealt with its most recent case of college pranks. Dubbed the “Bed Wars” by many students, the pranks deal with residents of Schaaf Hall going into other people’s rooms and moving the beds into different spaces.
This is not the first time Schaaf Hall has had mischief caused by its residents. Last school year, there were instances of property destruction and theft, including punching down exit signs and stealing numbers off of doors. There were also a few instances of Schaaf Hall residents pulling the fire alarm.
All of the misdemeanors led to a mandatory meeting for all Schaaf Hall residents that said if the behavior continued, all residents would have to pay a fine to make up for the damages.
Between the meeting and the end of the school year, the mischief in Schaaf lightened up, but now, as the 2024-2025 school year is at its start, the pranks have returned.
An anonymous source said most residents of Schaaf did not know what was happening until an email from Residential & Commuter Life came out Sept. 5.
The email recapped what was happening, stating that there have been cases of “unauthorized entry into rooms, theft, and property damage.”
The email went on to state, “Continued disruptions from this game will lead to disciplinary action through the Student Conduct process;” a similar warning to last year’s troubles.
According to the anonymous source, a group of students started lurking around Schaaf Hall wearing ski masks and carrying squirt bottles. The students would go around to different doors and bang on them.
The reason is unclear, but the anonymous source believes the group of students were only doing it to people they knew.
One night, the group of students banged on a door that happened to be unlocked, so they allegedly went into the room and threw everything off the bed. The students decided to do this to other people they knew.
However, one day, the students allegedly got the wrong room and ended up knocking on a female student’s door. When she looked through her peephole, she saw a group of students wearing ski masks and carrying squirt bottles that, through a peephole, could look like a weapon.
She immediately became frightened.
Crying, she called her Resident Assistant and described what had happened; however, this behavior continued and happened to a few other female students.
When it became clear that the female students didn’t know the people who were disturbing them, the “Bed Wars” prank became the big issue it is now.
According to the anonymous source, the intrusions mostly happened on the second floor of Schaaf and the men’s side of the third floor. The intrusion of the female students’ rooms happened on the first floor.
The source believes the perpetrators to be all first-year students because most of the incidents occurred on the second floor, which is almost entirely first year students.
Pranks have been a part of college culture for over seven decades and have become more prominent since the rise of the internet. Television shows from the early 2000s like “Jackass” and “Punk’D” were the precursor to internet prank videos, when the culture really took off.
Even Ivy League Schools like Harvard University take part in pranks on campus. An article summarizing all of the major pranks that have taken place on Harvard’s campus recalls an instance where some staff members of the “Harvard Lampoon” stole the President’s Chair from the office of “The Harvard Crimson” (Harvard University’s school newspaper) and was sent to New York City to appear on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” Fallon used the chair as his desk chair for the night.
The time of this college prank was 2011, right about when YouTube prank channels started to gain their popularity.
