To the untrained eye, Swarthmore appears a serious place of hard work and earnest dedication. Swatties sit quietly in Sci Commons laboring away silently at their differential equations problem sets like good Quakers. Once a year, however, Swarthmore students take some time to enjoy themselves. On April 1, the campus is invariably turned upside down into a wonderland of whimsy and fun. We here at The Phoenix have long delighted in reminding the student body of April Fools Day through satirical articles in our normally trustworthy and earnest publication.
Swarthmore’s engineering department has been engaging in tomfoolery on April 1 dating at least back to the 1970s, as The Phoenix’s own Aviva Weiser reveals in this in an interview with Josh Vandervelde ’23 covering last year’s engineering prank. Vandervelde said in the argument: “‘[The engineering prank has] been going on for well over half a century. It has been a continuous and expected, albeit somewhat mysterious, yearly prank … The earliest prank that I’ve heard came from the 1970s — it’s more of a myth and/or legend at this point that the Swarthmore engineers buttered the SEPTA train tracks when the rival football team arrived for the big game and they slid down the tracks for like a quarter mile.” Whether this anecdotal history can be believed or not, what is no in question is the longevity of this tradition at Swarthmore.
The first recorded prank occurring at Swarthmore took place in 1929, the infamous Parrish Cow incident of ’29. Elise Stammelbach Welfling ’33, a first year in Parrish that year, recorded in her diary on October 31,“At about four in the morning I heard the worst racket but just supposed it to be someone snoring heavily. In the morning I found that the boys had gotten a cow into the building, and it had gotten clear up to the second floor. They do the craziest things around here!”
The April 1 Phoenix from 1941 was the first instance of The Phoenix succumbing to the satirical temptation. Its top headlines include “Coeducation Dormitories to be Instituted in the Fall” (a feat not to be achieved until 1970) and “Tri-College Agreement Severed.” The article later goes on to detail the opening of a liquor dispensary in Parrish Basement, the Garnet Yacht Club entering spring competitions, and most unbelievable of all: Swarthmore’s Fencing Team was good. These incredulous articles surely prompted laughter in the student body, and the April Fool’s Edition would return next year even bigger than ever.
The following year’s April Fools Edition’s first page featured in large print “Cops Nab Gamblers in Book and Key Raid.” The Book and Key, being Swartmore’s now-defunct secret society, inhabited a stone “temple” at the end of Whittier Place. The Phoenix goes on to report that the Book and Key had been operating pinball machines for profit rather than mere “amusement.”
The Phoenix also featured fake ads such as one stating “The Swiss Navy Wants YOU: Enlist Today!!” This Phoenix also featured perhaps the greatest sports section ever with the full page headline: “Swimming Team Sinks in Pool: Many Feared Lost.” Outside of The Phoenix, other campus groups joined in on the fun. As this Swarthmore College publication states, “In 1965, Student Council brought to campus Sergei Nesmeyanov, the “Hangman of Hungary,” who ranted in Russian against Western decadence in a talk before the College community. It was a hoax; Nesmeyanov was actually a student’s friend from Columbia University.”
As the years went on, The Phoenix would continue the April Fools Tradition intermittently, with one issue from 1974 April Fools Issue leading with the headline “Bookstore to Offer Varied Selection Cheaply.” Steven Daniels ’81 recalls in this college publication that Clothier’s tower was a frequent site for pranks. Students hung a banner stating “This Space for Rent” and another banner with the Playboy Bunny Logo.
As Swarthmore careened towards the 20th century, the 90’s and early 2000’s were the golden age of Swarthmore humor. Some of these branks could be categorized as academic abuse, such as a prank in 1994 where students put notifications on several doors in official college letterhead that classes had been canceled. In 1999, the Swarthmore Warders of Imaginative Literature (now Psi Phi) replaced the arboretum labels with ones of their own design. These labels included imaginative titles such as “Green Plant (Herba viridis oxymorae)” and “Tall Tree (Arbor longa).”
The college’s pranks went digital in the 2000s, with student Gabriel Rosenkoetter ’02 hacking the libraries’ printers to replace commonly used “Swarthmore Words” such as postmodern and capitalism with blank spaces when printing. Rosenkottoetter claimed the prank in The Phoenix and paid a fine to ITS who had to repair the printers.
The college has joined in on these hijinks as time has gone on. In the 2010’s the library released a “retro” website which can be accessed here. Swarthmore announced via social media that it was officially dropping the first “r” in its name to “fix 150 years of pronunciation confusion.” Reed College, a socialist school for wackos on the West Coast, joined in on the fun by rebranding itself “Reedier” after acquiring Swarthmore’s discarded “r.”
Special thanks to Matt Zencey ’79’s article for the College Bulletin “Gotcha,” which has been enormously helpful in writing this article.
