The competition between School of Saskatchewan engineering and rural scholars is mythical, their practical jokes more so. Who can forget the gutted auto — painted red, with the slogan four Sale — Need $ — Teaching Walks — hanging off the Broadway Bridge in 2002? U of S officers definitely haven’t. College administration postponed pranking last Q4 after a university official protested about a practical joke installed in the rural scholars’ lounge. The suspension gave officers and the engineering and rural student societies a timeout to build new ground rules for varsity pranks. “We need to be certain this contention we have — and it is a fun contention — is safe,” claimed Saskatoon engineering student society president Ian Farthing.

The school asked the 2 student societies to scribble a group of suggestions that rule pranking, sometimes called “morale boosting.” Future practical jokes need to be entered to the campus safety dept, which should note any concerns and sign off on the practical joke before it’s executed. Pranking and stunting also has to follow the U of S student behavior code, a document that rules non-academic campus life.

This would restrict scholars from consuming alcohol while committing a practical joke. The school is condoning instead of condemning pranking to guarantee student safety, related David Hannah, associate vice-president of student and enrolment services. “If we ban these things, there is a risk they will be driven further underground,” he announced. “If we were to police a total ban on these activities, they might continue anyway and most likely without the provisions that we think make sense.” In the 1990s, that is precisely what occurred with practical jokes, claimed Hannah.

The threatening, public pranking maybe came to a close in 2002 when a student society — nobody has ever confessed — hung an automobile off the Broadway Bridge. The fire office and town engineers spent the day taking down the automobile, using resources that would have been better used somewhere else, claimed town officers at the time. Last month in B.C, 5 engineering scholars from the University of UK Columbia were caught attempting an analogous practical joke and now face criminal charges. In 2003, the school cancelled E-Plant, a fall convention that pits engineers against rural scholars in a public riot that started with an abduction and climaxed in a fight to save the missing student, who was taped to a steel pole. Right after, collusion of kinesiology and commerce student societies diminshed away, leaving engineering and rural scholars to keep on the collegiate quarrel.

The practical jokes became less public and less brazen.

“It’s gone on for years and during the past it was far more than it is now,” recounted Pam Aube, president of the agricultural scholars’ organisation. “We’ve been working ( with campus safety ) the whole year to keep this going. Our morale boosting is what sets farming and engineering aside from other colleges.” Both Farthing and Aube are fast to indicate that pranking isn’t the sole ‘morale boosting’ they are doing. Both student societies hold regular fundraisers for local and world causes. The 2 student societies limit their activities to scholars’ lounges. The rural scholars once dismantled a square baler and rebuilt it in the engineering scholars’ lounge. In the rural scholars’ lounge, engineers built a copy of Saskatoon’s downtown : Bridges spanned huge banks of dust that held water.

They once constructed an enormous beaver dam. In the autumn, the engineers dumped a pile of dust in the lounge and stuck a metal E in the mound, which led on to the complaint that postponed pranking on campus.

The U of S has a long list of pranking. “Students have been pulling practical jokes at the Varsity of Saskatchewan since classes commenced in 1909, when scholars dropped water balloons onto the heads of pedestrians from the roof of the Drinkle Building,” asserts the U of S archives’ site. There is a new, more wary time approaching for schools. U of S officers are not banning practical jokes, but they do not make school support official. The college will not be a party to the official pranking policy — which should be finished this spring — due to responsibility issues.

“If we were to be a signatory to a contract, then we’ve sort of caught ourselves in the middle,” asserted Hannah.

The U of S Scholars ‘ Union is working with school officers and the college student societies to build “an pleasant agreement,” claimed scholars’ union president Warren Kirkland.