We all owe those brave students at Merton College, Oxford, our deepest gratitude: if it weren't for them the universe would be in serious trouble. That's because in the early hours of the last Sunday every October, those heroes maintain the space-time continuum during the change from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time. They do this by heroically walking backwards around the college's Fellows' Quad, drinking just the right amount of Port to keep the continuum... continuous.
The second week in November is known as Raisin Weekend at St Andrews, the uni where third year students adopt first year students at the beginning of the academic year. During Raisin Weekend, adopted students show up at the homes of their "mothers" and "fathers" - at which point they're filled up with alcohol and dressed up in bizarre outfits. House parties break out all over town that weekend, and the festivities finish with a foam fight on the Monday.
And in America:
Pranks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are referred to as "hacks", and tend to happen under cover of darkness. This makes for interesting mornings as staff and students not only enjoy the hack itself, but also discuss between them how it could have been pulled off. Possibly the best hack was the painting of a normal car to resemble a campus police patrol vehicle... and then positioning it very carefully on top of the university's Great Dome Building.
Harvard's Primal Scream started out as a ten-minute screamathon on the night before the start of exams. That was back in the sixties. Now it's a streakathon, with naked students running through the university, cheered on by spectators and with music provided by the Harvard University Band.
Students at the University of Chicago organise the largest scavenger hunt in the world. Teams have four days to track down random - and bizarre - items, and complete tasks which, to date, have included "get circumcised" and "build a working nuclear breeder reactor". We don't know about the circumcision, but we do know that two physics students actually did build a plutonium-producing reactor - in a shed on the university's Quad.
The second week in November is known as Raisin Weekend at St Andrews, the uni where third year students adopt first year students at the beginning of the academic year. During Raisin Weekend, adopted students show up at the homes of their "mothers" and "fathers" - at which point they're filled up with alcohol and dressed up in bizarre outfits. House parties break out all over town that weekend, and the festivities finish with a foam fight on the Monday.
And in America:
Pranks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are referred to as "hacks", and tend to happen under cover of darkness. This makes for interesting mornings as staff and students not only enjoy the hack itself, but also discuss between them how it could have been pulled off. Possibly the best hack was the painting of a normal car to resemble a campus police patrol vehicle... and then positioning it very carefully on top of the university's Great Dome Building.
Harvard's Primal Scream started out as a ten-minute screamathon on the night before the start of exams. That was back in the sixties. Now it's a streakathon, with naked students running through the university, cheered on by spectators and with music provided by the Harvard University Band.
Students at the University of Chicago organise the largest scavenger hunt in the world. Teams have four days to track down random - and bizarre - items, and complete tasks which, to date, have included "get circumcised" and "build a working nuclear breeder reactor". We don't know about the circumcision, but we do know that two physics students actually did build a plutonium-producing reactor - in a shed on the university's Quad.
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