Where There’s Smoke…

In 1919, Dean George Sullivan recounted this prank pulled by the engineering students:

"I remember the night of the big fire. The old 'Ship' at the corner of Franklin and Lafayette Streets was a combined dormitory and theater. There were fifty or sixty beds in the dormitory with the prefect's room at one end. Some of the students got a lot of imitation fire material from the theater and hid it in the dormitory. At two o'clock in the morning the cry of fire rang out and there was the biggest sham fire you ever saw. No firemen ever rolled out a fire hose as fast as the hose was rolled out that night and there were no dry beds in that dormitory. The prefect wasn't drowned but he did have to be resuscitated. In fact, one of the students, who was probably a ringleader, applied for and was awarded a medal for saving the prefect's life."