Lampoon Hoaxes Freshmen With 9/11-Themed T-Shirts

Though most of the newly-inducted Leverett freshmen opened their doors to boisterous,  camouflaged, letter-bearing Leverett upperclassmen on Thursday morning, a few were greeted by something entirely different: the semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine—more commonly known as the Lampoon.

As Leverett HoCo visited freshmen with real housing letters in hand, the Lampoon did some express delivery of their own with fake Leverett housing letters. Some of the freshman recipients were not even assigned to the House.

But the Lampoon's deception took a grossly insensitive turn with the worst part of the prank: the freshmen who were "placed" in Leverett were gifted with T-shirts featuring an image of the Leverett towers above the phrase "Lever Forget"—drawing an all-too-unsubtle parallel between the gray towers and the World Trade Center.

"The t-shirts were really tasteless and heartless," said Meghan J. Smith '13, one of the pranked freshmen. "I don't know what kind of group would do this. [9/11] was a tragedy for thousands of people, and not only did it effect students around the world, but even students who go to Harvard."

Although they fell victim to the Lampoon's trickery, Smith and her blockmates were eventually placed in Leverett anyway. But other pranked freshmen, like Taryn I. Kurcz '13, discovered later in the morning that they were not actually assigned to Leverett.

"When the group who was doing the trick came to our room, we were just so excited that we found out we 'got into' Leverett," Kurcz said. She and her blockmates later found out that they had actually been placed in Currier.

In an e-mail to the Leverett House open list, House masters Howard Georgi '68 and Ann B. Georgi wrote that the Leverett students and staff "had nothing to do with this."

"It would have been obvious to anyone with even rudimentary morals and decency that this immature hoax was cruel and inappropriate," the e-mail stated.

Leverett HoCo co-chair Tiantong Wen '11 called the prank "upsetting"—on behalf of parties beyond the House.

"It was disrespectful to the entire Leverett community, which put in so many hours to ensure that Housing Day was a success," Wen said. "More importantly, it was upsetting because it was disrespectful to all of the people whose lives have been affected by the events of September 11th."

Wen said that Leverett HoCo members refused to let the prank get the better of them, and they appeared in Annenberg just as enthusiastic as ever to share with freshmen the joy of being part of the Leverett community

"After all," Wen said, "that spirit and joy—and not the kind of tasteless and hurtful 'humor' exhibited by the Lampoon—is really what housing day is all about."