“Gotcha!”

Everyone has heard something like this during April Fools’ Day celebrations.

Students, faculty and administration share the jokes they played and the times they were taken for fools:

Interim President Lou Hencken said he was at a conference in the 1970s when technology was not as efficient as today’s cell phones.

He received a telegram that read: “Fire in housing office. Caused by pizza oven. Most records destroyed. Don’t worry.”

Hencken was then dean of housing, and it had been his idea to bring the oven to the office.

“And I’m panicking,” Hencken said, even though he remembered it was April 1. “It took 25 years for me to find out who did that. I called from a pay phone,” he said. But what made the joke ironic is something actually happened to the housing office’s phone connection, so the call did not go through, he said.

“Things like this only happen on television,” he said. “Either the phone lines were down and there had been something like an ice storm…all I know is I couldn’t get through.”

Hencken drove back worrying to a waiting, intact pizza oven.

“This is probably the reason I don’t do practical jokes anymore,” he said.

Mayor Dan Cougill said he has never been played or plays jokes on others.

“Maybe I’m a stick in the mud.”

Assistant English professor Daiva Markelis once told her class they would all be voted off one-by-one in theme with the show “Survivor.”

“It was kind of stupid, but at least some students were caught off guard,” she said.

Markelis also puts bumper stickers on cars of people she knows to celebrate the holiday.

She said the stickers usually say something such as, “Adore me for the goddess I am.”

Markelis said now she is more likely to play jokes on others.

“I’m usually kind of on the look out.”

However, when she was a student herself, it was different.

“Someone actually told me class was canceled,” she said. “It was some excuse like the teacher was drunk or something.”

English professor John Kilgore also played a trick on his class.

“I just went into class with a serious expression and asked if there were any questions about the mid-term.”

There was no mid-term, and his class caught on quickly, he said.

Kilgore and others also sent three sections of counterfeit teacher evaluations to the English department chair about an instructor with the “premise that she lost her mind in the middle of the semester.”

He said the chair knew right away.

“I put fireworks in my sister’s medicine cabinet so they went off when she opened it,” said graduate economics major Brice Donnelly.

George Lesica, sophomore political science major, said he usually does not play jokes but might do one this year.

“I’m going to announce my run for university president,” he said. “I figure if Lou (Hencken) can fly, so can I.”

Katherine Huskey, a senior industrial technology major, said her friend faked an injury.

“My freshman year, a friend of mine pretended she fell down the stairs.”

She knew Huskey would be coming down the stairs for class, so she splattered fake blood all over and twisted her legs in an odd position.

“I started screaming and hollering,” Huskey said. “I went over to check her pulse and she just started laughing.

“A year later she told me she was pregnant. That one I was really pissed at her for.”

Huskey said her friend was a convincing actress and kept fake blood around because she was a theater major.

The reason for all the jokes is unclear. According to the Web site wilstar.com/holidays/aprilfool.htm, the closest tie is to the eight-day celebration of the new year in France. In 1582, the holiday ended on April 1.

Some refused to celebrate the holiday on this date.

“These backward folk were labeled as ‘fools’ by the general populace,” the Web site states.