What a fun holiday! April Fools’ is supposed to be a day filled with laughter and embarrassment. Neither should come from a place of extreme shame, guilt, or any negative feelings for that matter. That means that pranks should be generally harmless. I’ve seen and performed my fair share of pranks and as long as you give thought to it, and it is one that you can carry out no matter the day or holiday, it is considered harmless—inconveniences, white lies, and doing anything out of the ordinary fall into this category.
However, I want to preface this list by saying pranks that play with others’ emotions are not cool or funny. False love confessions, pregnancy announcements, breakups, death and birth news, or extreme harm are out of the question.
With this, let’s start with harmless pranks to perform at Jefferson either during April Fools or after!
Switching Marker Tips
Most rooms have markers in them. From study rooms in the library to the classrooms at Ravenhill mansion. To mess with people, try switching the marker tips between two different colored markers. This not only messes with people’s color expectations, but also their vibrancy expectations. You see, some markers do not work, and some work very badly. If you frequent a spot enough times, you’ll get a sense of which markers are good. But, if you alter the tips, then it becomes random again!
Lead Someone on a Wild Goose Chase
Recently I’ve seen some cute chalk drawings on the pavement around main campus, and it gave me the great idea of giving someone a useless adventure to go on. It’s similar in theory to those instagram comments that say “click on my profile” and then their profile leads to another one, and so on and so forth. For this, write go to Gutman Library in front of Downs, then at the library, tell them to go to Ravenhill Mansion, and then back to Gallagher. Get more obscure with the locations (White Corners or the Smith House) while also increasing the distance between the locations.
Stack the Blue Chairs in Weird Positions
All around campus, there are these blue lawn chairs that students frequently sit on. There are some in nearly every open grassy area including outside both of Kanbar’s main entrances and outside the first-year residence halls. With all these chairs, it’d be funny to rearrange them unconventionally. Stacking two on top of one another, pulling them into a star-shaped or a circle, moving one super far away from the rest, flipping one upside down, or even placing one in the center while the others surround it sounds like great ideas.
Draw Something in Reserved Rooms
Choose something relatively easy to draw and start posting it everywhere you go. Make it creative! A small animal, or character from a series you like. No artistic talent is required either! In fact, the worse the quality, the better the prank. As long as the drawing is distinct and consistent, this will be a very fun surprise people will encounter in their student lives.