Fecal Crock Pot Creates Stench, Uproar in Oakwood

For three dollars, the anonymous perpetrators purchased a crockpot from Gift & Thrift similar to the one pictured above for their prank. (Photo: Jason Godshall)

With the small exception of tree vandalism, this year has lacked any major pranking on campus. No event has grabbed the attention of the campus, unlike many years in the past. A recent event involving feces and a Crock Pot, however, shows that the prank culture that Student Life refers to is still alive and well.

The first clue that sometime was amiss came when Jake Goertz walked into the second floor kitchen at around 2 a.m. “It smelled like roadkill that had been left outside for a while,” he said. “That’s what I thought it was, at first…. I thought that someone had put roadkill over by the refrigerator.” Goertz looked all through the area affected—about half of the lounge and several feet into the near hallway—failed to find anything, and went to bed.

At about the same time, first-year Mattias Clymer, another resident of the hall, noticed the smell. “I recognized the smell, but I didn’t know where it was coming from. I thought maybe someone had [placed feces] in my room, or something. Luckily, the smell weakened after I closed the door, so I could get to sleep.” Others, including sophomore Luke Fuglie, noticed the smell from the other side of the hall, but felt as if it might have been a cooking experiment gone awry.

Sophomore Nick Troyer finally found the offensive device and unplugged it at around 3 a.m. “I found the Crock Pot, and I could tell that the smell was coming from it, but it took me a couple seconds to realize what was in it,” he said. “I couldn’t believe that it was [feces] at first.”

When asked why Oakwood was chosen, the perpetrators, who wish to remain anonymous, said, “Oakwood was really a last resort. We were trying to get a girls hall, originally, but Northlawn was too far to carry a Crock Pot full of [feces], and Maplewood still had people awake in it. We also didn’t want to break open hours.” The idea for the prank came from a friend in a different school, who mentioned it at the beginning of the year. “We were thinking about doing it in February, but then word got out, so we decided to wait until now,” they said.

The ventilation system had dissipated the smell by morning, but the series of events hadn’t ended. Later that week, the contents of the Crock Pot were found smeared on a couch in the third floor lounge of Oakwood. “Most people thought that the baseball players had done it,” said third floor CA Josh Lederach. “I guess it was meant as retaliation.” The couch was removed by the Physical Plant shortly thereafter.

The perpetrators want it to be known that they had nothing to do with the smearing. “With our prank, it’s just a bad smell that will leave in a little bit. [The smearing] is destructive,” they said.