Another good HUT prank involved park benches in Helsinki. I don’t remember what year this was, but the story goes somewhat like this:

First off, students at HUT (and other Finnish universities) have distinctive coveralls which they (we :) wear when they want to distinguish themselves as students during various student- oriented occasions. These coveralls have different colors, and Finns are quite used to associating people in colored coveralls with “a bunch of students doing some weird student stuff. This is not something that students wear as everyday wear, mind you, it’s reserved for certain occasions.

Anyway, during this caper some students went out and (with great difficulty) purchased a park bench from the city/park authorities. They got a receipt, and then proceeded to carry this park bench across town. It didn’t take long for some police to stop them, with the assumption that the guys had stolen the bench. The students showed the police the receipt, and complained that they were getting stopped by the police all the time and could the police do something about it? Finnish police being generally quite helpful, the policemen radioed out a notice that there were a couple of students (in coveralls) carrying a legal bench across town and that they should not be harassed.

Naturally, as soon as this was done a lot of students in identical coveralls proceeded to grab most of the park benches in central Helsinki and carry them to a pre-arranged location. Rumor has it that they managed to stack up hundreds of park benches into an “artistic” formation before anyone else got a clue that something strange was going on :)

Re:Other schools with geek tradition? (Score:5, Funny)
by Orava () on Tuesday February 06, @04:33AM CST (#72)
(/. User #21071 Info) http://www.akumiitti.fi/~orava/