User talk:LaSaltarella/Bellprank

Chronicle of Higher Education, September 26, 1997, Pg. A11

After a 50-year battle with his conscience, a prankster at Ohio Wesleyan University got rid of what had been weighing him down: a 40-pound bell clapper.

An alumnus last month returned the clapper that went with a 130-year-old bell in the university's Grey Chapel. The bell was rung to signal class times. The alumnus also sent a letter explaining that he had stolen the clapper years ago when he was an undergraduate there.

The letter writer, who identified himself as "Eggplant Bloomingdale III," said he had decided to return the clapper because the burden had become too much to bear. "I can finally live in peace," he wrote. "Do you know what it is like, carrying that thing around all these years?"

The university has displayed the clapper outside the chapel. Administrators such as William C. Louthan, the university's provost, have referred to the incident as the "Clapper Caper."