Article Lady Liberty on Lake Mendota
Summary: The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Pail and Shovel Party promised that, if elected to student government, they would move the Statue of Liberty to Lake Mendota, and they made good on their promise.
Lady Liberty sinks into Lake Mendota. (Photograph by Ravi Kochhar). In February 1979 an astonishing sight appeared on Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota. The top of the Statue of Liberty seemed to emerge from the icy water. Astonished local residents flocked to the lake to witness the bizarre spectacle. It was not a mirage. It was, instead, one of the most famous college pranks of all time.
The Pail and Shovel Party
Campaign poster for the Pail and Shovel Party The presence of Lady Liberty on Lake Mendota was the handiwork of Jim Mallon and Leon Varjian. They were the two leaders of the “Pail and Shovel Party” that had gained control of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s student government in the Spring of 1978 — much to the surprise of everyone, including themselves.
For years the affairs of the university’s student government had attracted little interest. Turnout for elections was invariably low. Mallon and Varjian decided to shake up the status quo by running an absurdist campaign. They made outrageous campaign promises. For instance, they promised to convert the entire student government budget, all $70,000 of it, into pennies and allow the students to dig into it with pails and shovels. (Thus, the name of their party.) They promised to order all campus clocks to run backwards so classes would be over before they could begin. They said they would put dormitories on wheels and roll them to different parts of the campus each morning to provide students with a new perspective. They pledged to flood Camp Randall Stadium and wage mock naval battles. And finally, they said they would buy the Statue of Liberty and move it to Lake Mendota.
That year’s election saw the largest voter turnout of any for the past five years. Mallon and Varjian swept into office with 1510 votes out of 4529. Varjian commented, “The students felt we had the best campaign platform. We built it in front of them on the mall with 1,000 popsicle sticks.”
The Pail and Shovel Party proceeded also to win all of the senior class officer seats, five student senate spots, and posts on the boards of the student newspaper and yearbook. This gave them the ability to do almost anything they wanted. And they proceeded to do exactly that.
Building Lady Liberty
As soon as Mallon and Varjian were in power, they began implementing their plan of absurdity. They threw campus-wide toga parties, and bought toys to occupy students during the boredom of registration. But their masterpiece was their fulfillment of their campaign promise to move the Statue of Liberty to Lake Mendota.
The statue appeared on Lake Mendota in February of 1979. Varjian claimed the statue had been flown in by helicopter, but that the cable holding it had snapped causing Lady Liberty to crash through the ice until only the top of her head and her arm remained above water. In actuality, the statue had been constructed in a woodworking shop out of chicken wire, papier-mâché, and plywood and then moved out onto the ice.
The plan had been for the statue to appear overnight, but it took three days to erect, which ruined the element of surprise (and ensured that no one believed Varjian’s tale about the statue plummeting from a helicopter). Once in place it towered 40 feet above the surface of the ice. People came from all around to see it, causing traffic jams around the lake.
The submerged appearance of the statue fueled speculation that it was a veiled commentary on the widespread political apathy of the students, by way of an allusion to the end of The Planet of the Apes. Varjian denied this suggestion.
Controversy
Whatever the symbolic meaning of the statue, its presence infuriated the critics of the Pail and Shovel Party (of which there were many). It was not the statue itself that people objected to, but rather the cost of it — $4500 that had come out of student funds. The student newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, became the outlet for Pail and Shovel’s critics. They accused Mallon and Varjian of being nothing more than “professional clowns” who had hijacked the student government and were proceeding to make a mockery of it, and, more seriously, they accused the two of illegal use of student funds.
In response to this criticism, Varjian noted that the total cost of the statue had only been ten cents per student, and he offered to refund this amount to any student who so desired. Sixty students staged a rally to demand their dimes. Varjian obligingly wrote each of them a check for ten cents.
The Daily Cardinal was not satisfied. It continued to denounce the statue for three weeks until March 2, when unknown arsonists torched Lady Liberty in the middle of the night, burning her to the ground. Mysteriously, the Daily Cardinal had a photographer on hand to record the burning, though it denied any involvement in the deed.
Lady Liberty Rises Again
Pink flamingoes congregate at the University of Wisconsin-MadisonThough they lost their statue, the Pail and Shovel party had its revenge by winning re-election to head the student government again the following year. They campaigned on the slogan “Are you nuts enough?” One of their campaign flyers read: “Are you nuts enough? A year ago you turned over the reins of student power to a couple of mindless clowns. Now we are asking you to go for it all. We are asking you to reelect Mallon and Varjian, who started it all, the two who made wackiness, nuttiness, irresponsibility, craziness and self-motivation household words. Are you nuts enough for that?”
The Pail and Shovel party celebrated its return to office by covering the lawn outside the University’s administration building with over one thousand pink flamingoes.
Then the party contemplated how to top last year’s Lady Liberty on Lake Mendota stunt. They briefly considered building a model of the Chappaquiddick bridge “complete with an upside-down automobile sticking up from beneath the ice.” But eventually they decided to go with Lady Liberty again. But this time they built her even larger (half again as large as the original in New York). Her construction now cost $6000, and they made sure to fireproof her.
Once again she drew crowds. However, she proved no match for the bureaucrats of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, who determined that she resembled a fishing shanty and demanded her removal from the ice to satisfy regulations. She was relocated to a shed.
Vallon and Marjian decided to quite while they were ahead and did not seek a third term in office. Thus, the university’s student government returned to its former (boring) self.
The Statue in Popular Memory
Lady Liberty on Lake Mendota occupies a treasured place in University of Wisconsin lore. Postcards of her remain popular, and keychains and refrigerator magnets bearing her image are also available. In 1996 Lady Liberty made a brief reappearance when she was rescued from her shed and lovingly reconstructed by the Hoofers, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s outdoor recreation club.
The construction of Lady Liberty represented an ingenious spin on the perennial fascination college students have with stealing statues. Instead of stealing a statue, Mallon and Varjian simply built their own. But the sheer bizarre spectacle of Lady Liberty sticking her head above the Wisconsin ice has made this one of the most popular college pranks of all time.
References
- “Campus bozos win on zany campaign.” (June 1, 1978). Chronicle Telegram.
- Neil Steinberg. (1992). If at all possible, involve a cow. St. Martin’s Press: 169-189.
- Bascom Hill Pink Flamingo. Wisconsin Historical Society.