By Tate M. Slaven
Staff Wrier
April 1 marks the one day of the year when pranksters with creative minds can get away with devising ways to punk the people around them. Many people around campus have either planned their fair share of pranks or have been victims of these clever ruses.
At St. Bonaventure, students and staff can always expect some sort of creative prank every April Fools’ Day stemming from a certain staff member in the journalism school — Paul Wieland. Wieland, a journalism and mass communication lecturer, has been noted as an original prankster.
Just last year, Wieland, with help from Pauline Hoffmann, dean of the school of journalism and mass communication, successfully tricked Bonaventure into believing the SBU-TV truck would travel abroad for the 2012 London Olympics.
“I wrote up a press release that the standard definition truck was needed at the Olympics because most countries in Africa and other underprivileged countries couldn’t watch the games without it, as they couldn’t afford high-definition televisions,” Wieland said. “I even ran an SBU-TV news story.”
According to Wieland’s story, the truck was going to travel to Newfoundland and get shipped on a barge to Iceland. When it arrived abroad, it would be run by Bonaventure students participating in the Oxford study abroad program. People around campus fell for it, and Wieland’s April Fools’ prank was a success.
“I’ve been doing gags since the 70s at all my various jobs, and I really have had more fun than a barrel of monkeys,” Wieland said. “My gags are done on two standards — one being that they do not harm anyone even by embarrassing them, and that they are based off of a kernel of reality that takes off due to people reacting so fast to these unexpected jokes.”
Carole McNall, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication, fell prey to two of Wieland’s April Fools’ Day shenanigans. McNall walked out of the John J. Murphy Professional Building on April Fools’ Day in 2008, and discovered what appeared to be a parking ticket on the window of her car.
“After a round or two of ‘What? I’m legally parked!’ I got to the car and pulled off a ticket titled ‘St. Bubbleventure University,’” McNall said.
She knew she had been fooled. The second April Fools’ folly happened to fall around the same time as registration. McNall spotted a poster for a “Seminar in Veterinary Journalism,” something she hadn’t remembered hearing the journalism department offering.
“I’d have to plead that it was first thing in the morning and I’d not had any coffee yet,” McNall said. “I looked again at the part of the poster that said registration was limited to April 1 — and realized what and who the chief suspect was … it was Paul.”
Students have fallen quarry to pranks on April Fools’ Day, too. Laura Meyers, a freshman journalism and mass communication major, was pranked this year by her boyfriend, who was vacationing in Myrtle Beach.
“He called me and told me he was arrested,” Meyers said. “I totally believed him and then felt like an idiot after.”
Steve Marcus, a junior journalism and mass communication major, recalled being pranked in middle school by his teacher.
“He brought Oreos for the whole class,” Marcus said. “Little did we know, the cookies were filled with toothpaste instead of the delicious filling we were expecting.”
April Fools’ Day is also known for some of the more traditional pranks many know and love. Charlie Guzior, a junior journalism and mass communication major, takes great pride in pranking his mother annually by placing a rubber band around the faucet on his kitchen sink.
“I know it is a joke that everyone has either done or seen, but I get her every year,” Guzior said. “It’s priceless, so I’ve made it a tradition.”
Whether it is an innovative and stirring prank that took time to concoct or a classic joke that never gets old, April Fools’ Day is a day where, according to most, laughs are countless and memories unfold.
“It’s all about good jokes; ones that play off people and their ability to react quickly, but ones in which no one gets hurt,” Wieland said.
