I, as a member of the
St Andrews's class of 2005, read this node in my searching for
senior pranks. I quickly ran to the aforementioned "Dave's" office (yes, he works there to this day), who told me that the prank didn't turn out exactly as described. By hotwiring the receiver directly, they skipped the
pre-amp necessary to make the speakers work correctly. Thus, the music being played would be sporratic and jarled. So I, as well as my friend (who I shall hesitantly refer to as "
Dexter") took it upon ourselves to revive this prank correctly.
Three floors beneath the tower
speakers lies the
chapel. Dexter knew that behind a mysterious locked door was a machine that was programmed to play music at set times. If we could hijack the machine for graduation day only with a CD-
alarm clock, we would be
senior prank kings.
Problem 1: Getting into the back room.
As described before, keys were hard to come by. The school had recently changed all of its locks, so Dexter's key ring wouldn't work. We tried
climbing through the rafters, but nothing led there. As we sat in the chapel one night, Dexter looked over to the oposite side of the room at the
organ pipes. Upon closer examination, there was a door behind them! So, I squeezed myself between the pipes and the wall, heading towards the darkness. A minute later, I opened the door to the back room
Inside held a 70's-era machine, exactly as we thought. Unscrewed the back of the machine to find a series of circuit boards and input jacks (all mislabeled). The input jacks all were
RCA-style, so our 1/8 inch test plug wouldn't work. We ran upstairs and grabbed a
Gamecube from my friends room, the only thing we could think of with this type of output for audio. With friends positioned about campus with
walkie-talkies to tell us if it was playing, we plugged in the
Gamecube.
Silence. Damn.
Dexter and I decided to call it a night, swiping the
owner's manual to read over the next day.
Over the day, we developed the theory that we would have to program the
timing system as well. You see, at a certain time, the speakers click on. Then, a separate unit feeding into the timer simultaneously provides the bell sound effects. All Dexter and I had to do was program in a certain time to engage the speakers, then provide our own choice of
musical decadence.
This proved much more difficult than you may think. Programming the time was simple. We followed the directions in the manual. Our first trial run was a success, blasting "It's me,
Mario!" across the campus at 2AM.
But then we hit problem number 2. You see, to program it in, we had to confuse the machine into playing a file that wasn't there. While it searched, we played our music. The problem was getting it to give up its search. After about 20 minutes, we discovered the only way to dis-engage it was to hold a certain button for 10 seconds.
Cut to the night before graduation. Dexter had purchased a CD-alarm clock. I made the traditional CD, starting off with
"Hell's Bells" "School's Out for the Summer" "Asshole" and
"Closer." We figured they would turn it off before we could get any further. We included a note on the alarm clock reading "Keep it alive! Class of 2005!" We then screwed the panel onto the back, leaving the unit the same way it's always looked.
We programmed the timer and the alarm to go off at 1:05PM the following day.
Graduation was fabled to end sometime around 1:00, but no one really knew. I would be the last student to receive my diploma, so we didn't mind if the music overshadowed the end of the ceremony.
Dexter and I both knew that we weren't thinking of a crucial aspect that would destroy our plan. So we decided that we would expect failure. I timed my
wristwatch exactly with the timer in the basement.
Graduation went smoothly. I received my diploma at 12:55, and the
chaplain began his closing remarks. As I waited in eager anticipation, glancing at Dexter from time to time, we knew that he had to finish his speech before 1:05. All we could do was wait.
At exactly 1:03, the students rose in a
final salute to the school, and then exchanged traditional hugs to family members and others. two minutes later, the speaker clicked on. Several chimes ran out loudly across the congregation below. But then the guitar began. As people looked up, they began to discover that this was
AC/DC's "Hell's Bells," instead of the school's traditional theme.
Success!
I ran over to Dexter and gave him the biggest high-five ever. We were congradulated by student, parents, and faculty alike for out
mischief.
As an interesting post-script to the story. Graduation occurs before
final exams. The only students left on campus are
underformers, frantically studying all day. A friend of mine called me to say that for the following week, our mix played from the belltower at 1:05 every day. Apparently, the faculty could not figure out the answer to Problem 2.
Post-post-script. Several weeks later, I received a letter from the
Assistant Dean of Students, the legendary Fuhrer
Caldwell. Contained in the letter was the note we had included in the machine with another letter reading:
"So sorry to see you graduatate after so many great year. Now, tell me how you turn off the machine!"