Phoenix five prank

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Register Don't have an account? Phoenix Five Earth View source. History Talk 0. Do you like this video? Play Sound. From this day forward, we declare no more war. Pax Utopia. X-Men Like this? Let us know! As three of the group kept watch outside, the remaining two members entered the Band Shak through an open window and managed to locate the Tree after going through an old medical library and a wall.

After procuring the Tree, the Five brought it out of the Band Shak through the front door, and quickly managed to squeeze it into the back of Mr. Green's car. As it would have taken a decent amount of time to fit three of the group's members into the back seat as well, the Tree was driven away from the Stanford campus and left in a nearby Palo Alto neighborhood.

Once all five members returned to this safer location, they managed to fit themselves and the Tree into the car and drive back across the San Francisco Bay to the safe confines of the University of California. The group later described the event as a "crime of opportunity", noting that they had no plans to steal the Tree upon arriving on the Stanford campus, and only happened to find it unattended the morning after seeing it at Cardinal Chaos. Once safely back in Berkeley, the Five kept knowledge of the heist strictly limited, not even telling other members of their fraternity about what had transpired.

The Tree was kept in Mr. The thought that nothing would come of their efforts quickly vanished as the story broke on October 23 in the Stanford Daily student newspaper , almost a week after the event. From the outset, there was little doubt that Cal students were responsible for the Tree's disappearance.

In the initial Stanford Daily story, Henderson said that he believed three or four people had followed him out of Maples Pavilion to the Band Shak on the night in question. He also indicated that a neighbor had found " Bears " written in shaving cream on a bathroom wall of his residence the next morning something the Phoenix Five later denied responsibility for.

Once the story broke, the five students decided to establish an identity and claim responsibility for the heist. The "Phoenix Five" name was decided upon because of the obvious alliteration and fact that it had internal significance within the fraternity.

The Phoenix alluded to the mythical bird that rises from the ashes and never dies, not to the Arizona city. The Phoenix Five first claimed responsibility for " liberating " the Tree in an October 26 front page story in the Daily Californian Daily Cal , Cal's student newspaper. In the article, the Five took the opportunity to poke fun at their school rivals. They proclaimed that the Tree deserved to get out of Stanford, but would return before Big Game "even though he knows that Stanford is full of a bunch of weenies.

The mascot also indicated that he had been introduced to the outside world where people are different and actually love their school. The letter and accompanying picture of the blindfolded Tree was perhaps the most famous correspondence during the two-week ordeal, as it served to show that the Phoenix Five had no hostile intentions and were only interested in humorously promoting the Cal-Stanford rivalry in the weeks leading up to Big Game.

Henderson, on his part, responded to the correspondence by challenging the Phoenix Five to escalate their efforts and kidnap him, as he proclaimed, "I am the Tree Despite the promise to safely return the Tree to Stanford before Big Game, school administrators and campus police from both universities reacted harshly to the prank, and this reaction and the subsequent student response fueled a storm of local and national media coverage.

From the outset, police treated the heist as a serious crime. UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl also reacted strongly to the actions of the Phoenix Five by releasing a brusquely worded statement calling the heist an "outright theft ". The Chancellor also issued an ultimatum , stating that Cal's mascot, Oski the Bear , would not be allowed to appear at the team's next football game at Oregon State unless the Tree was returned to the UC Police Department by midnight on October Bay Area television news crews reported live outside of the UC Police Department the night of the deadline, but the Tree was not returned.

Instead of returning the Tree by the midnight deadline, the Phoenix Five summoned local media to an empty parking lot in the Oakland Hills and paraded the costume in front of KTVU Channel 2 television cameras , for the purpose of assuring the public that the Tree was still intact.

The Phoenix Five reiterated their initial comments that the Tree would be returned to Stanford unharmed before Big Game. Despite these reassurances, Stanford police retained their hardline stance, as Captain Raoul Niemeyer stated, "[i]f you do the crime, you do the time.