My colleague Norie returned from a visit to the Thresher offices with a box of old photos that had been stashed away for quite some time. After a quick perusal, it looks like a bit of a grab bag, mostly images from the mid-’80s through the mid-’90s, and oddly enough it seems to include some pictures that were taken for the Campanile as well.
This was easily the most eye-catching set, as Willie gets put securely back where he came from:
They did that really fast. I passed him facing the library going to class and by the time I was walking back from class he had been spun around again. Granted it was a T-Th class so it was a little longer, but still they didn’t leave him rotated for very long.
http://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/67842/thr19880415.pdf?sequence=1
“They had disconnected the light on Anderson Hall almost every night since Easter vacation, so the campus police would not be suspicious when the light was off. Each morning they reconnected the light so that Physical Plant employees would find no problem with it.”
That’s attention to detail.
I think we’ve been through this before. The gentleman seated in the quad is WILLY. With a Y, like “Willy’s Pub.” The gentleman with the tour bus and the lifetime supply of weed is WILLIE. With an -IE. He sings “Always On My Mind” and “Georgia On My MInd” but not so far as I can tell “Gentle On My Mind.” 😉
I get those guys mixed up all the time.
To be fair, Marty, I am not sure that Mr. rice ever expressed a preference for the spelling of Will{y | ie}. If he was asked, I would bet the answer is lost to us.
I would go so far as to say that Mr. Rice was probably never called “Willy” during his lifetime by anyone except perhaps his mother.
The second photo clearly shows the inferior (less stable and more dangerous) single-point lift that the so-called professionals used, in contrast to the well-thought-out three-point design used by the student amateurs. And why the professionals thought it necessary to set the statue on the ground is baffling — but it likely explains how they managed to break it. If only they had been as careful as the 21-year-old pranksters!
Nice comment. The university ‘s reaction was really overblown. I never will understand why they just did not ask the students to put him back They did nothing destructive. It was really just a very clever prank that was really well executed
My dad, then-Proctor and Professor of Civil Engineering Edward “Fast Eddie” Holt, was charged with setting the punishment for the sole prankster identified. Although he carried out his charge dutifully and even fairly, as a graduate of M.I.T. with a “Tech is hell” banner hanging in the Proctor’s Office, I always thought that he was secretly tickled at the ingenuity of the engineering students’ elegant prank.
Are you going to show the pictures from the Campanile ? I may have been there then.
You bet! I’ll use the best ones–there are a lot.