A Prank at Carleton College: This Is Not the Observatory You’re Looking For

My cousin goes to Carleton College, in Minnesota, and I would be proud if he had something to do with this: A group of Carleton students has turned the campus’s Goodsell Observatory into a giant R2-D2. The pranksters apparently climbed up the side of the observatory and hung what appear to be bedsheets that were colored and stitched together to match R2′s blue components. Classic, but it has been done before — notably at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (This one’s better, though. Chalk that up to the liberal-arts grounding.)

It seems that the sheets were taken down yesterday morning, soon after they were discovered. At the moment, there’s not a lot of information available about who did this and what happened to them — but we have asked the college for details.

“There was a rumor going around that the students had been fined, and that is not true,” said Eric Sieger, a college spokesman. He emphasized that the college would not want to encourage this. “Our main concern would be the safety of the students. Obviously, we don’t want them climbing around on that thing.”

Here’s a video of the final product, taken as maintenance workers deconstructed the giant droid and some of R2′s best lines play in the background. (The pranksters are obviously pleased with themselves. “It will be everywhere,” the cameraman says.)