The Rise and Fall of the 95 theses.

April 28, 2008 | Contributed by Daniel Walters

I wrote the 95 theses.

I know, I know. Not exactly a breaking piece of news worthy of the Drudge siren. It’s more like breathlessly revealing that, guess what, Stalin, of all people, was behind the assassination of Trotsky! And that OJ fellow? He might have had a hand – or at least glove – in the murder of his wife!

Jessica Davis guessed that I had written those three-page incendiary mere moments after it was discovered. It only took Galen Sanford and Jessica Carrier a few days to figure it out.

And I’m guessing even administration – Mandeville and the RDs – had a pretty good inkling of whodunit. They didn’t attempt to prosecute me because four others had, like Abraham’s ram, taken my place. The requisite quota of punishment was met, so there was no need to drag my paranoid, trembling self in.

So, it’s not like the following information is a surprising confession to anyone.

Nor is it necessarily a defense of the theses. It’s also not an apology. It’s neither bragging nor regretting.

Instead, it’s merely a record, on paper (or screen) of the events that unfolded on the night of October 31, 2006. It’s purely a correction on the misinformation you think you know, and elaboration on the information you do know.

This is a first person account of rise and fall of the prank that made both the local evening news and Sportsillustrated.com.

Granted, the prank happened over a year ago. The conversations are reproduced and stylized from my hazy memory. Exact accuracy is not to be expected. If you want to correct something, that’s what the comments section is for.

For those of you who already know of the 95 theses tornado of a saga, this will add facts to your assumptions.

For those of you who are going “95 what??” then buckle your seatbelt, release the parking break, and ignite the ignition.

You’re in for a wild, convoluted, ride.

More…

Ideas.

It began with a notion.

It accelerated with a convergence. If I hadn’t had a chance meeting with Josef Bookert on the Duvall Bridge one sunny September morning, it’s likely the 95 would be different.

But first, for the uninitiated, let me explain the character of Josef Bookert. And he is a character.

Josef is readily identifiable by two attributes: His long Jamaican dreads and his gleaming, slightly impish, smile. Josef smooth, easy-going, chuckling affability means that essentially everyone likes him. Only the sticklers, those who are cap-sensitive to the letter of the law, get their feathers ruffled.

Josef Bookert has probably done more to facilitate genuine community, to stamp the College Experience with his unique brand of awesome than Student Life and ASWU combined. He’s served on both, but it is his unofficial, and often unendorsed, activities that bring about the memories, the unmatched camaraderie, and occasionally, the scolding from administrative types.

Separately, Josef and I had come to a conclusion: Whitworth’s school spirit lacked spirit. It had no punch, no panache. At that time, the there was dorm spirit, stemming from the occasional dorm rivalry. Yet, these rivalries had flaws. While they united dorms, they divided the school. When the Mac smiley was grinning, BJ wasn’t. Dorm rivalries were often lose-win.

Ah, but a school rivalry. That was the kind of the thinking that paid dividends. I came from North Central High School, and our rivalry with upper-crust, snobby Shadle Park was one of the biggest factors in the reason I donned my red and black lettermen’s jacket with genuine pride. It united us across bounds of race, gender, class, and musical preferences.

There, on the Duvall bridge as I headed for Saga, Josef floated past the ideas that had been stewing, and gradually percolating, in his mind since Traditiation.

We needed a rivalry with Gonzaga. We didn’t respect EWU enough to justify hating them.

But Gonzaga? They were the jerks who dominated headlines every March. The media fawned over them, mainly because of their proficiency in getting a small orange rubber sphere through a ring. They regularly beat us – just barely – in the US News and World Report rankings. They thought themselves slightly better than us in most categories, as any good rival should.

Yet, we couldn’t just start a rivalry by announcing one in a letter to the editor in The Whitworthian. We needed them to strike against us.

But how?

By offering them a provocation they could not refuse.

Josef outlined a plan. As with all great terrorist organizations, this one was divided up into cells. One cell would sew a massive pirate flag. They would blitz Gonzaga one night, put it at the top of one of their flagpoles, and padlock it to prevent it being taken down.

Josef wanted my help with another cell.

In the tradition of Martin Luther, Josef said, we are going to write nine point five reasons why Whitworth is better than Gonzaga, make a bunch of copies and tape them on the Gonzaga campus the same night as we hung the flag.

Just nine-point-five? I said. Why not go for the full traditional stock of 95?

Well, that’s a lot of writing, isn’t it? Josef said.

A challenge of quantity as opposed to a challenge of quality? Oh, I was all over that.

To the typing-machine!

Writing.

The express purpose of the theses was not to, necessarily, be humor. I was not to outline an actual persuasive case that we were superior to Gonzaga.

Instead, the theses had to serve two purposes.

1) They had to make Gonzaga Students spittingly, frothing-at-the-mouth-angry. Angry enough to trick them into doing something stupid. Like striking back.

2) And they had to be so mind-numbingly absurdly stupid that Gonzaga would look absolutely ridiculous for getting mad about them.

Thus, the final product had a schizophrenic feel to it. Some lines were genuinely funny, saying “Hey, man. We just playin’.” Others were downright cruel, meant to prod at Gonzaga’s insecurities and obvious flaws. They were meant to be, above all, inflammatory. And some, as Bill Robinson, pointed out in his e-mail, were just plain stupid.

(Frustratingly, many people missed that these were supposed to be stupid. I’m guessing these people watch Airplane! and say, “Wow. That Leslie Nielsen sure isn’t very smart. I’m surprised someone that stupid gets acting jobs in Hollywood, much less be allowed to fly a commercial airliner.”

There were a number of different sacred cows the theses were meant to slaughter, grind up, cook, and serve back to Gonzaga on a sesame seed bun. In this case, taboos were meant to break.

First, Gonzaga’s pride. Basketball.

2) Our Basketball team has never totally choked in the sweet sixteen.

3) Our men can grow real moustaches, the kind you can wax and hang stuff from.

Second, there was some sort of meme going around with the absurd notion that Gonzaga students would drink alcoholic beverages on occasion. Sometimes, they would even indulge so much that they would become “intoxicated,” and commit foolish acts. No mockery of Gonzaga would be complete without mentioning the drunken, slovenly Gonzaga student.

45) When asked why he decided to drink alcohol in moderation, the Whitworth student replied, “Alcohol has caused so much pain in so many families that I couldn’t bear to get caught up in that lifestyle. Plus, I like to be able to wake up where I choose each morning.” The Gonzaga student responded by throwing up and passing out on the linoleum.

76) Most Whitworth parties require guests wear a formal dress or snazzy tuxedo. Most Gonzaga parties require guests to wear a lampshade.

Of course, throughout the entire process, I was thinking: What would make me angry? If Gonzaga unleashed their own version of the 95 theses on Whitworth, what would make Whitworth want to break out the artillery and storm the castle? Simple. Make fun of B-Rob. You mock our president, and it’s on.

Fortunately, Gonzaga had their own version of a university president: Father Robert Spitzer. A couple outrageous lines about proclaiming Bill Robinson’s superiority and Robert Spitzer’s inferiority would cause Gonzaga blood to boil. Inspired by the basic Chuck Norris joke formulas at this time, these theses followed this basic outline:

20) While Whitworth President Bill Robinson is strong and ruggedly handsome, with a cleft chin and chiseled features, Robert Spitzer is weak and sickly, with a small bladder.

This trend continued over about 15 more theses.

21) Bill Robinson spends his weekends fighting bears and dragons. The only thing that Father Robert Spitzer fights is his own crippling self-doubt.

22) As a small child, Bill Robinson plugged a hole in a dike with his finger, saving all of Holland.
Robert Spitzer couldn’t even plug the massive holes in the logic of his doctoral dissertation: A Study of Objectively Real Time.

The one’s that got the most controversy, however, dealt with Catholicism, a major part of a Catholic university. Apparently, religion is a pretty big deal to some people. To me the idea of a religious war in today’s day and age was hilarious in its pure absurdity. To my knowledge, no member of the 95 theses prank had a single anti-Catholic sentiment.

Yet, we had to address Catholicism in the theses. After all, Martin Luther did in his Theses. Most of the Catholic jokes were pretty tame. I mean, how many priest molestation jokes do you hear every day from stand up comedians.

By my count, only ten theses, out of a possible ninety five, dealt with religion.

52) We would make fun of some kind of disconnect between what the priesthood teaches and what they actually do, but we can’t find any examples of this.

93)I heard if a Jesuit bites you… you become one…

With each thesis I grew more frantically paranoid. When I finally printed the theses, I titled the document, “C.S. Lewis Notes” and printed only 100 at a time before switching computers or profiles. If I was going to go get caught, I wasn’t going to be because some I.T. guy traced me back through the printer history.

As a wiser and older man, I look back on some of the theses – some I’m not going to reprint – and realize they could have been better. A few distracted from the theses’ general purpose. A few turned the controversy in the wrong direction – arguing over semantics rather than the prank itself.

But it wasn’t just the text that made it incendiary. It was the execution.

 

Escalation.

With the rough draft of the document completed, we had prepared the match to light the fuse to bring about an explosion.

The question, of course, was how big would that explosion be? To continue the metaphor even further: We needed a master demolitionist.

We needed to find a prankster’s prankster. We needed to find a few people absolutely expert in the Art of College War. We needed somebody clever, somebody stealthy, somebody both mentally and physically agile.

And where else would we find such a creature, but at the Ninja Theme House?

Meet Beau Chevassus and Matt Park. Behind the Ninja masks and mime makeup, sit a pair of devious minds. Whenever a prank happened on campus, the first thing you’d do is to look for their fingerprints .

Beau and I were confronted with a devilish dilemma. Should we keep the size of the group small and safe? Or should we risk getting caught by inviting enough people to make the prank downright catastrophic?

After much tossing and turning, fretting and sweating, we made our decision: We’d make the prank a huge one, despite the consequences. Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.

One by one, we began to take aside the creative, the daring, and the slightly foolhardy. We’d give them just enough information to tantalize. “I could go on,” we’d say, “but you must swear to secrecy.”

But a few days before, Beau spammed an encrypted e-mail on the prank proposal to a cluster of friends – most in Mac – telling them where and when the whole mess would go down.

The password, predictably, was “ninja.”.)

The Long Night.

Oct. 31.

Halloween.

And exactly 589 years after Martin Luther sticky-tacked his version of the theses to a fateful door in Wittenberg.

There we stood in the Ninja Theme house.

Our accomplices that surrounded us – a troupe numbering more than fifty (or seventy if you believe some accounts). – read like a Who’s Who of Whitworth leadership. We had RAs, SGCs, a Dorm Senator, and of course, ninjas of all variety.

One RA brought his entire hall, counting this as his hall activity.

Every person set to work. We pulled out reams of blue tape and masking tape to begin compiling the 12,000 pages into sets of 3. Some begin painting and sewing sheets of red and black, alternate Whitworth flags to festoon our enemy’s campus.

Several illustrated Illuminated Theses on butcher paper, taping them to large metal Spokane Teacher’s Credit Union signs we found in the Back 40.

We cobbled together hundreds of miniature red flags bearing the Whitworth “W,” intended to stick them in the ground. We also had in our arsenal several “Sponsored by ASWC” bumper stickers, and one Childs Smiley face Halloween costume.

Maps of Gonzaga were passed around, as operational strategies were frantically diagrammed. At precisely 3300 hours, we would strike from dozens of different angles, starting on dozens of different areas on campus. Some would be dressed as ninjas, while others would wear licensed Gonzaga paraphernalia. A few would be disguised as Pizza Pipeline employees, theses stowed away within their pizza boxes, in order to gain access to Gonzaga’s dorms.

I said a few solemn words, something about the duty to one’s country and school, people divided up into cars – and in a flash, were off and gone.

As for myself, I didn’t have the guts to go on the actual prank. I stayed behind in the Ninja Theme house cleaning up, doing dishes, and watching the clock tick-tock, sliding past 3:30, 4:00, 4:30.

I could only imagine what the others were up to.

A few words from Beau Chevassus:

Have you ever had so much adrenaline pumping through you that everything flew by in slow motion? This is the Uh-Oh Moment—that period in time where everything comes to a standstill, and you are able calculate the 95 different possibilities of how that situation will turn out for the worst. I had several Uh-Oh Moments that Halloween night. My Ninja Sense tingled at every leaf rustle that echoed off the Gonzaga buildings. “Is that campus security or a portly-shaped shrubbery?”

At the end of that night my spirit chortled with delight, and my nerves were raw. Raw indeed. No massively coordinated, nocturnal prank is complete without several shots of panic-induced epinephrine. I got my fill that night.

No, it was not the first time I was dressed as a Ninja at 3:00 am, but this time national security wasn’t on the line. My main purpose in the prank was to gather as many trusted cells as possible and communicate The Brass’ intentions. After prepping at the Ninja Theme House, each group of Whitworth students was to infiltrate Gonzaga, work their magic, scream at a given time (which turned out to be incredibly eerie), and sprint off campus. Simple.

That night after posters were painted, pep-talks given, watches synchronized, and last rites declared, we piled into our respectable clown cars. My cell included Matt Park and Mark Schuldt, who were also disguised as Ninjas. We parked a stone’s thrown away from the Gonzaga campus, and we hoisted the Pro-Whitworth tarps and canvases onto our backs. We dodged and darted our way, from shadow to shadow, leaving a wake of confused storm troopers and disabled tractor beams. One giant canvas was draped across a hedge, while another was taped to the back of a baseball diamond’s backstop. As we flew across campus, we saw 95 Theses posters slowly accumulating on doors, walls, and statues. Blue tape was used… yes these were thoughtful pranksters. The most impressive canvas we hung (a giant cartoon of a scowling pirate) was stretched between steel girders 30 feet above the ground on the west side of the McCarthey Athletic Center. I distinctly remember the pitter-patter of feet softly scurrying under us three as we clung to the side of building. I wondered if we should call out our spotted owl signal, but the risk of a security guard and not a fellow conspirator, was too great.

Ultimately we did have some confrontations with Gonzaga’s campus security—two run-ins to be exact.

Once was when we were paralleling Nevada and a security patrol turned on his lights and sped off towards us. “Meet at my truck!” I fluttered through a suppressed whisper. *Poof*. A flicker of shadow was all the bewildered security guard saw. Ah, these were professionals.

We were within an arms reach the second time we were detained. This was well after we heard the triumphant Whitworth battle cry of our comrades bounce off the slumbering dorms. The Whitworth cells were speedy indeed, but our Ninja trio had one more tarp to hoist.

There is a certain Gonzaga building next to division, an office I think, that has a giant mound of rock leading up to the rooftop. We jumped the gap between the rock and the roof in the dark (what’s Ninja espionage without jumping an alleyway?).

After hanging the giant “W” over the edge of the building in such a way that every commuter on Division that morning would see it, we scrambled down the inky cliff face. As we got into my truck, we were doused in the headlights of Gonzaga security. At this point, I thanked my lucky [ninja] stars it was Halloween. The Pavlovian security guard was conditioned to accept abnormal-looking characters on October 31^st.

Still, there was something suspicious about these three who were dressed as 1980s pop culture phenomenons.

Thus he sat and watched.

Those of us from the Ninja Theme House were practitioners of an ancient technique we demonstrated and shared; it is called Kasumi, essentially “The Art of Deception.” Immediately this Kasumi coursed through our veins. “Act like fools!” I hissed. Mark, Matt, and I immediately jumped out of the truck and executed the cheesiest Ninja poses we could muster, dancing and frolicking about in his headlights like drunken pixies.

It worked perfectly.

The security guard stepped out of his car and went about checking locks on doors, too above these hoodlums to acknowledge their immaturity.

We quickly and silently piled back into my truck. Before this Uh-Oh Moment, I had never turned my truck’s ignition as nonchalantly as I did at that time, despite the “Go! Go! Go!” my comrades were whispering.

The night was a success.

Yes aspects were stupid, and no the prank wasn’t perfect. However for a covert event that massive and complex, I purr like a kitten when I recall how well-executed it was.

In every good prank, there is nothing vandalized or hurt… except for egos. I am proud to say I was a part of the poke that Gonzaga’s ego felt for a long time.

 

A few words from Josef Bookert:

The night was one to be remembered forever. My partner in crime, Taylor Counts, and I prowled the roads calmly, as if we were humble pedestrians returning home from a movie. We had previously instructed our friends and collaborators to strike within a seven minute time frame, and everything went off without a hitch. Let me reconstruct the scene:

Cool wind rustled the fallen leaves past quiet and dark buildings, a flag pole clicking its pride before the COG, the sound of our feet scraping the lonely pavement. A beep from our watch, then chaos. Out of the shadows came the laughter of fifty plus scurrying Whitworthians headed in every which way in eerie synchronization. They taped the 95 thesis with a gusto and speed only seen in the midst of mischief. Ninjas climbed up buildings, over rooftops, taping the soon to be infamous list in every cranny they could, on every stature, on every door.

Groups congeal near lawns as unorganized leaves began to take the shape of W’s. Long white bed sheets were strung on the gates and entry points, painted with certain theses exploding in red and black. Taylor and I merely watched in awe as the campus fell to our silent riot.

Our plot was thrust full swing into the darkness of Halloween, and, where once stood an institute of Jesuit pride, now settled the maelstrom of hundreds of white lists and absconding ninjas. The streets and walkways of Gonzaga flooded with a swarm of pranksters for a mere seven minutes, leaving behind a controversy covered on the 11:00 O’clock news the next night, lead story.

Taylor and I walked back to the car in silence, leaving behind a nigh-crime scene to echo through the rumors of prank history. Score one for Whitworth, dear readers, score one indeed.

Fallout.

Even in spite of the events of the night before, the sun rose the next morning. For a few moments, it seemed as if nothing had changed. Whitworth still buzzed with the ho-hum hum of the regular: the scamper of squirrels, the clatter of falling pinecones, the muddied mumble of groggy students grumbling about the quality of dining hall food.

But gradually the juicy details of the 95 theses began to drip-drip from the grapevine. “Did you hear?” students said. “Did you hear what happened over at Gonzaga?”

Most of the gossip came straight from the loose lips of our co-conspirators, a bit smug from the festivities the night before.

I didn’t mind. Public opinion seemed comfortably on our side. Maybe all my paranoia, all my fretting and sweating and fingernail-chomping, was all for nothing.

Then came the game-changer. An E-mail from Bill Robinson entitled “Go Bulldogs.”

In that moment I lost all interest in eating anything ever again. Had I been caught? No, generally the e-mails you really need to worry about are ones from Bill Robinson or Dick Mandeville labeled “untitled message.”

This particular e-mail was merely a repudiation of the prank, whoever was responsible. That didn’t necessarily make me feel better. If you listened closely to the e-mail, really pressed your ear against the screen, you could hear the public opinion of the prank flushing inevitably down the crapper.

As Robinson goes, so goes Whitworth. People like to joke about how popular Robinson is at Whitworth – heck, the 95 theses made a point of highlighting that – but Robinson really does wield an extraordinary amount of influence at Whitworth. He’s the most effective PR man I’ve ever seen, and usually king of diffusing potentially explosive situations.

(Just think about his expertly-worded e-mail during the lead-up to the 8^th of May. While Robinson couldn’t placate the extreme elements, he didn’t need to. His e-mail pacified those in the middle and in doing so sucked the steam from the movement. Thus, the 8^th of May was hardly a 5^th of November.)

However, in this case, the e-mail didn’t diffuse anything.

It catalyzed it.

In a fell swoop of text, Robinson may have sabotaged both of our ends. Our goal was to provoke a rivalry. Robinson’s goal, presumably, was to try to stem anything from getting blown out of proportion. Honestly, we didn’t want the theses to be a big deal at Whitworth. We wanted them to be a big, earth-shattering call-to-arms deal at Gonzaga, but not at Whitworth. Gonzaga’s retaliation was to be the thing that Whitworth concentrated on and got angry about.

The e-mail, however, informed every single student to the prank at once. In doing so, it launched an enormous storm of controversy. The exact type of controversy we wanted… at Gonzaga.

Without some kind of e-mail, news of the event would have spread word-of-mouth. Eventually, presumably The Whitworthian would have done a story on it, but by the time it was published students would have formed their own opinion about it. Ideally, then Gonzaga would retaliate, and only then would the students get up in arms.

As it was, the well was poisoned. Those who actually had the work ethic to read the actual theses came to it expecting to find a horrific, offensive, blasphemous, lame set of facts. “They were an affront to our respectable institution!” most students thought before they’d laid eyes on a single thesis. The inconsistent, intentionally – and sometimes unintentionally – lame 95 didn’t stand a chance.

Knowing this, I went deep into hiding. I adopted an official position on the theses for those who asked. “Well, I thought the idea was good, but some of the theses just went too far.”

Went too far. That was a phrase I grew quickly tired of hearing. Another one was “I’m a great fan of a good prank.” The question always hung: What pranks, exactly, have they been a fan of? The 95 theses didn’t do a lick of property damage.

Nobody was really even inconvenienced.

What was more interesting was hearing everybody give their honest opinion on what they read. Usually, nobody is going to walk straight up to me, look me in my eye, and say “I hated your column this week. It was real dreck.” If they don’t like it, they just don’t say anything. I usually have to judge success on how many compliments, if any, I receive. But this time, I could hear my fellow comrades talk about how weak they thought much of the 95 were.

I would have been downright fascinated, but I was far too busy with a little emotion called “complete and utter fear.”

Meanwhile, in the very heart of Gonzaga.

Whitworth students discovered the details of the prank gradually. Gonzaga students, on the other hand, woke up literally surrounded by primary sources.

There was a time when we wouldn’t have been able to know what they were thinking.

There was a time when we would have had to guess at the comments they made.

There was a time, in other words, before the Internet.

That very morning Gonzaga students rushed to record the reaction to the prank with their very best Friend: Facebook.

One particular Facebook group, “95 Theses Shows How Stupid the School Is” gained 600 members in about 5 days, according to a Gonzaga Bulletin article.

The creator of the Group, one David Tobias, even went so far as to write a rebuttal to every single thesis we wrote.

And here was the kicker. The rebuttal was entirely serious.

For example, to the line “The pope may be infallible, but Bill Robinson is infallibler,” Tobias wrote. “Infallibler isn’t a word.”

Curse his unholy dictionary skills!

He also replied to the line “Whitworth Prep is so exclusive that YOU probably have never even heard of it,” with the straightfaced rebuttal: “No such school exists.”

Well, yeah. That you know of.

Meanwhile, in the comments section, it was looking promising for reprisal. “They defaced Bing!” one commentator said of the smiley face lovingly placed on the crooner. The comments cried for Vengeance! Revenge! Retaliation!

It was times like those that made us want to steeple our fingers and cackle, “Everything is proceeding according to plan…”

There was one factor we hadn’t counted on, however: A sanctimonious, anti-Catholic handpuppet named Obadiah Bible Boy. Obadiah began commenting on the 95 theses Facebook group, saying odd and absurd things, even posting, on his profile, an odd conspiracy theory about the Catholic Pope.

Obadiah, of course, was a character that Beau Chevassus had created. Chevassus meant it to be satire, presumably to point out of how ridiculous anti-Catholic sentiment was in this day and age. If you knew Beau personally – or even knew Obadiah personally – that would have been clear. But the uninitiated, unaware of Beau’s comic sensibilities or Obadiah’s offensive proclivities, took it at as the mad rantings of a hopelessly-confused and bigoted Whitworth student.

Tobias deleted the Facebook group and somebody – nobody quite knows for sure – reported Obadiah’s account to the Facebook administrators. Only real people, it seems, are allowed on Facebook.

I mention this seemingly-tangential aspect of the prank’s fallout to make a sociological observation:

It’s fascinating to see how hard it is for people to detect satire when it’s coming from the “Other.” Tobias seemed to have such a low opinion of Whitworth that Obadiah Bible Boy’s rantings had to be the serious religious bigotry. He expected Whitworth students to be so stupid that it was entirely likely we believed that “infallibler” was a word. That’s not an indictment of Tobias as much as it is human nature.

Democrats tend to believe the most absurd stories about Bush. Republicans tend to believe crazy tales about Clinton. Obadiah believed the most wild conspiracy theories about the Pope. We rarely give the enemy the benefit of the doubt.

Sadly, for whatever reason, Gonzaga retaliated only with words. All the anger, the uprising, the schemes of revenge discussed on Facebook, were for naught. Maybe Gonzaga lacked the creativity. Maybe they were just lazy. Or maybe they figured out that the whole thing was a just a scheme to restart the rivalry tradition.

We succeeded in the “making them incredibly angry part.” There was fist-shaking a plenty. We succeeded in creating a catastrophe that got plenty of press. That included a Local TV news story that editorialized heavily, “What happens when a college prank… goes to far? Tonight at 11!” And in our proudest moment, a positive mention on the Sports Illustrated Website, “Score a point for Whitworth… There’s nothing quite like spoofing the most important religious doctrine of the 16th Century to poke fun at your rival.”

But the final goal, spurring retaliation, never happened. Writing can guarantee an emotional reaction, albeit unpredictably. But it can’t always guarantee action.

Never under estimate the sheer power of the enemy’s laziness.

Consequences

There’s no way you can pull off a prank with 50 plus people and not expect to be caught. Someone, somewhere, for some reason, will talk.

In this case, it was Kyle Pflug. During a meeting with RD April McGonigal, she asked him if he was involved in the prank.

He told her the truth.

That’s the pesky thing about involving honest people who do their job.

“Never involve an RA with a prank,” is a common sense rule as old as the Hammurabi Code. It’s not because they’re unethical. It’s because they are ethical. And “truth” and “duty” are often higher values for them than “not getting in trouble.”

Kyle was sent down to one of those iconic meetings with Dick Mandeville. Masterminds Josef Bookert and his roommate, who didn’t want somebody to punished for something they came up with, accompanied him. (Personally, I was more than willing to let others take the rap for my misdeeds. I was more than thankful for it.)

(For some reason Scott Donnell joined the group as well, despite the fact that Scott Donnell literally was only informed of the prank a few moments before it happened. Of all 50 people involved in the prank it’s likely that Donnell may have been the least involved.)

Yet, even under questioning from Dr. Mandeville, himself, the 95 Theses Four refused to reveal who wrote it. While the Gonzaga Bulletin story said “The person responsible for writing the “95 Theses Why Whitworth is Better Than Gonzaga” has been identified” I remained, at least officially anonymous.

There’s a certain swelling of admiration that comes from seeing a friend given an opportunity to rat you out, and then refusing to take it. That’s loyalty. That’s admirable.

After some time, the controversy faded. As usual, Finals and Winter Break heals all wounds. Other controversies – controversies about wounds deeper than a three-page flyer could inflict- would arise the next semester.

Regrets? We had a few. There are a few theses that make me cringe to this day. Not as much because of their offensiveness, but because of their unintentional lameness. As with anything, there are always small aspects that could use improvement.

But I guarantee you: For most of the 50 people who participated, whenever the phrase “95 theses” are mentioned in the future, they’ll smile to themselves and think: “Those were the days.”

And those precious memories – of the explosive results of the potent mixture of immaturity and obsession – are some of the most valuable treasures of a college experience.

At least at Whitworth. I can’t speak for Gonzaga.

_______________

Aspects of the prank that didn’t make the final cut.

Dry-Ice Bombs: A dry ice bomb is a pretty basic feature of a college prank. From the beginning, several dry ice bombs were supposed to explode on the other side of campus to both cap off the nights festivities and throw Gonzaga Security off our trail.

Reason rejected: I pleaded constantly to not involve anything explosive in the prank. I wanted to keep it both legal and disaster free. My pleas were taken into consideration, but ultimately rejected. The Dry Ice Bomb plan went forward. Fortunately, on the night of the 31^st, the bombermen ran into a problem. Even though it was Halloween night, the holiday of dry ice, they couldn’t find a chunk to work with.

Thank goodness.

Drunk Scarecrow: One of the most classic Gonzaga points of mockery is the rather basic notion that they like to throw back a few every once in a while. Often to the point of passing out and vomiting, sometimes at the same moment. We wanted to communicate this nuanced message in a visual form.

Here was the plan:

We’d find a suitable fountain or birdbath. Then we’d – like Moses on the Nile – transform the water into dark green Jello, with around 100 Jello packets. We’d sprinkle in a variety of lucky charms and carrot chunks. Finally, we’d take a scarecrow, dress him in the finest Gonzaga sweatshirt, and plop his head into the tainted fountain.

To the uninitiated slightly blind observer, it would look as if some poor Gonzagan Soul had “tossed his cookies” into one of their finest fountains.

Vomit humor at its most sophisticated.

Reason rejected: Two reasons. We couldn’t find a fountain that would work to our specifications and second, we were worried that dumping Jello. There are some mighty fine lines between Prank, Vandalism, and Jail. There are some things worth going to jail for. Incisive commentary on the notion that Gonzaga students may not exactly be teetotalers is not one of them.

Pirates vs. Ninjas: The Cover Story: Of course, Gonzaga security would be a bit suspicious to see a bunch of Ninja’s running about willy-nilly. In other pranks, Whitworth students have used a fake Frisbee golf game to mask their escapades. Unfortunately, in this case, we didn’t have time for such an alibi.

Obviously, Ninjas running around are suspicious because you don’t expect to see them.

But what if we could make it so ninjas were expected.

With that concept, the “Pirates vs. Ninja” day was born.

I hacked out a bunch of crappy posters – authentically crappy – promoting a contest: “Which is better? Pirates or Ninjas. This Halloween, dress as your favorite. The numbers will be tallied in the dining hall at 5:00! Be there!”

And this next phrase was key: “Late that night, we’ll hold a Pirates vs. Ninja Capture the Flag Game! Be there!”

The posters were to be posted around the campus before the prank. Ideally, security would have seen them and turned a blind eye to any Ninja or pirates shenanigans.

I even added a gmail account at the bottom: piratevsninjagu@gmail.com (owned by me) to lend it authenticity.

Reason rejected: No one wanted to go through the tedious process of actually driving to Gonzaga and putting up posters. In the end, however, we didn’t need such an elaborate scheme. Apparently, simply the strategy of “running at a reasonable pace” was enough to defeat Gonzaga’s security’s force.

Giant Tractor Tire: When you have a successful prank formula, you stick to it. Back in the day, before their youthful idealism had been replaced by weary cynicism, Matt Park and Beau Chevassus pulled off the classic “put a giant 300 pound tractor tire,” in front of the BJ main doors prank. That tire still resides, anti-BJ spray paint and all, in the Back 40.

We tossed around the idea of taking that tire, repainting some profound quip on it, and leaving it somewhere conspicuous the Gonzaga campus.

Reason rejected: Frankly, giant tractor tires are unwieldy creatures. The thought of foisting the tire onto the back of Beau’s truck made visions of flat tires and pulled back muscles dance in our heads.

—

Want to check the primary source: The 95 Theses.

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