Caltech pranks MIT’s newspaper

The staff members of The California Tech distributed 15,000 copies of the parodied newspaper during MIT’s campus preview weekend (April 12-15). Check it out!

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6 Comments

  1. Eugene says:

    Remember when they stole that cannon?

    Posted 4/14/2007 at 4:56 pm | Permalink
  2. Michael says:

    Heh, yeah. That was last year’s MIT’s campus preview weekend.

    Posted 4/14/2007 at 8:34 pm | Permalink
  3. Allison says:

    I love that Caltech’s retaliation for the cannon was so lame. I thought the fake copy of the Tech was funny, but it was practically impossible to get my hands on a copy of it because the students distributing them didn’t do any research first to find out where MIT students normally pick up the regular Tech. They just put them in random, mostly out-of-the-way places around campus, and then stood in the hallway giving them out - very conspicuous. Not to mention the formatting of the newspaper as a whole (font, layout, and other things) were pretty significantly off.

    We steal a gigantic cannon and transport it across the entire country, and in response you… print some newspapers. Not so impressive. Nice try though - it did brighten our Friday the 13th!

    Posted 4/15/2007 at 12:04 am | Permalink
  4. Allison says:

    P.S. I didn’t get a few of the jokes. What the heck is In-N-Out University supposed to be a parody of?

    Posted 4/15/2007 at 12:16 am | Permalink
  5. Michael says:

    Hey Allison,

    Yeah, I gotta adMIT, the cannon retrieval wasn’t all that great (the original plan was to contract with a helicopter moving company to quickly snatch the cannon. That *almost* worked except that streets would have been forced to close.).

    The newspaper parody was neat, and the people who worked on it put a good deal of work into it. But as you point out, it was not a hack worthy of Caltech caliber (ie. Printing phrases on the moon ;) ). Actually, the newspaper parody formatting looks a lot better than the normal student run paper at Caltech which is not all that great :).

    Hopefully, in the future, we’ll pull off a brilliant hack on MIT :).

    P.S. Supposedly, In-N-Out Burger is a popular burger chain around the west coast. I’ve never heard of it before I got here. They also have Jack In the Box and Carl’s Jr. burger chains around here. All I’ve seen in PA are: McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy’s.

    Posted 4/15/2007 at 2:40 am | Permalink
  6. Allison says:

    Hmm, maybe you should also let the hackers/newspaper editors know that they should do a little more research into their target audience - here on the East Coast, we don’t have weird chain burger restaurants like that. Just McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, and… yeah, that’s basically it. Hm.

    I wish you the best of luck with the brilliant hack on MIT, I’d really love to see it. Caltech keeps considering this a rivalry, but everything they do is lame and everything we do is awesome… :P

    Posted 4/16/2007 at 2:42 am | Permalink

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