Caltech Goes Low Tech to Get Its Cannon Back

from la times

A copter raid? A taunt on scaffolding? Calling MIT police first? What were they thinking?
By Paul Pringle, Times Staff Writer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Cannon retrieval may not be rocket science, but a group of intrepid, cross-country-trekking Caltech students has learned it isn't much easier.

On Monday, two dozen of the Pasadena-based scholars used more brawn than brains here to recover a 111-year-old cannon that Massachusetts Institute of Technology pranksters had swiped from Caltech last month.

Shortly after 7 a.m., in a chill coming off the Charles River, Caltech junior Scott Jordan exhorted his schoolmates to roll the 3-ton Fleming Cannon off a cobbled MIT courtyard, where it had rested trophy-like since Thursday.

"Back where it belongs!" Jordan yelled.

With that, the shivering Caltech students, most dressed in the thin red jerseys of the school's Fleming House, broke out ropes and a handmade dolly to push and pull the wooden-wheeled cannon toward a waiting flatbed truck.

Caltech's low-tech reclamation of the weapon capped four frantic days of bicoastal strategizing, desperate fundraising and last-minute airline bookings.

The latest skirmish in the two schools' recent prank war also provided some practical life experience to the budding scientists and engineers.

They found out that 12 hours is not always enough time to make a sufficient number of trips to Home Depot, and that keeping a Caltech secret from MIT might be impossible because of the traffic in graduate students between the campuses.

Students at Fleming House, a Caltech residence hall, began scheming to get the cannon back as soon as they heard that MIT had its mitts on it. The cannon disappeared after a crew of "movers" showed up at Caltech on March 28, presented a phony work order to unsuspecting security guards, and carted it off — barrel, carriage and tongue.

The Caltech students assumed that Harvey Mudd College jokesters had taken the cannon, in a reprise of a 1986 stunt.

But when it didn't turn up at Harvey Mudd in Claremont, the Flems, as they call themselves, began to wonder if the cannon had actually been stolen.

The loss would have been devastating. The cannon is fired for Caltech commencements, "ditch days" and other special occasions.

Then it surfaced at MIT's McDermott Court, in front of the towering Green Building, the barrel adorned with a giant mock-up of the school's class ring, and the display marked by a plaque proclaiming that the cannon had been shipped back east by the "Howe & Ser Moving Company."

It was payback for multiple pranks last year. Caltech students had handed out to incoming MIT freshmen hundreds of T-shirts that said "MIT" on the front — and on the back, "... because not everyone can go to Caltech."

The Caltech squad also changed an MIT sign to read "The Other Institute of Technology," and rigged a laser to spell out "Caltech" on the Green Building.

But the cannon hijacking took matters to a new level, and the Flems resolved to strike back with pride-restoring razzle-dazzle.

At a lunch meeting Friday, they embraced the expensive, tricky but sure-to-be-satisfying idea of plucking the cannon from Massachusetts territory with a helicopter, perhaps swooping down in the moonlight.

They convened a larger meeting that night at the campus home of Tom Mannion, Caltech's assistant vice president for student life. Gathered around bowls of M&M's, they discussed the looming difficulties of the operation and complained that MIT had crossed the line by taking the cannon. Because of its age and fragile state, they declared it "non-prankable."

Mostly, the plotters wanted to grab back the cannon before MIT could return it. That would be true dishonor.

"The helicopter company has seen the site, and it is not a problem," said Jeff Cox, a graduate who was advising the students.