Caltech Seniors Ditch Classes, Prank Underclass Students

 

Senior students at Caltech ditched classes Thursday as part of the institution’s annual Ditch Day tradition and left their underclass students with elaborate puzzles, extraordinary mazes, and other challenging hijinks to work on throughout the day.

“It’s the one day of the year that Caltech students can let down their hair and just have a good time,” said Caltech’s senior media relations representative Deborah Williams-Hedges.

Ditch Day is one of the institute’s many traditions and pranks. It dates back in the 1920’s when seniors, longing for a break, decided to give themselves a day off and collectively vanish from the campus.

But the annual tradition had turned the prank to the graduating students when their underclass students started to modify the seniors’ classrooms every Ditch Day, filling the rooms with sand, Styrofoam, a disassembled-and-reassembled car, and a functioning cement mixer, among many other items. Furniture had also been glued to ceilings, moved into courtyards, and suspended from trees.

Seniors decided to counter these modifications and stacked cement blocks in front of their doorways before leaving the campus. Over the years, these “stacks” evolved into complex, imaginative puzzles that are carefully planned out for months or even years in advance in order to occupy the underclassmen throughout the day.

The “stacks” usually left involve obstacles inspired by books, video games, TV shows or movies to be solved by teams of underclassmen. The teams are typically identifiable by T-shirts, hats or costumes bearing the name of the stack they’re attempting to solve.

Previous “stacks” include giant water pistols and aquatic races; laser mazes; fully-themed and costumed scavenger hunts; sophisticated electronic locks, puzzles and barricades; human bowling; rappelling off buildings; and giant tricycle races.

Caltech is located at 1200 East California Blvd. Call (626) 395-4652 or visit http://www.caltech.edu for more information.