MIT is famous for its “hacks”–practical jokes on an enormous scale, like have a giant balloon saying “MIT” emerge from under the field on the 50 yard line at half time at the Yale-Harvard game. When I was a student at RPI a variant hack was practiced. There was a tradition among the fraternities to create a fictional student who would go all the way through and eventually receive a degree, without actually existing.
This was before computers handled registration, and a clever student working part-time in the registrar’s office could work wonders. When I was there, the “studoid”’s name was Argus Cobbledick. He would be enrolled in classes, and a different student, usually an upperclassman unknown to the professor, would impersonate Argus in each of his classes. Argus’ persona was that of an earnest B- student. I asked one of the chief hackers why that name; wouldn’t “Stephen Burnham” be a lot better if you were seeking anonymity? “Adds to the challenge,” was the reply.
While I was there, Argus was running about a 2.8 average. I never did find out if he graduated, having transferred to Berkeley by that time, but a bee was planted in my bonnet. A few years after I started teaching big classes, just before the final, I announced to the class that they would have to bring their student ID’s to the final exam. At the exam, I waited until they had filled in their names on the answer sheet, then announced that they had to now pull out their ID’s and put them on their desks. Three students immediately got up and ran out of the classroom. One of them, however, had left the exam behind with the name of the student he was replacing. He, he, he.
