Lady Liberty in Madison, WI

In February 1979 Lady Liberty poked her head above the icy waters of Lake Mendota. Astonished local Wisconsin residents flocked to the lake to witness the bizarre spectacle. Unfortunately, she was only there for three weeks before she disappeared in a blaze of fire, the victim of arsonists. But the next year she returned (fireproofed this time) though again she didn't stick around for long. This time she fell victim to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which determined that she resembled a fishing shanty and demanded that she be removed from the ice to satisfy their regulations. She was duly relocated to a shed.



The presence of Lady Liberty on Lake Mendota was the handiwork of Jim Mallon and Leon Varjian, the two leaders of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's notorious Pail and Shovel (P&S) party. That year the P&S party had assumed control of the student government (much to the dismay of their rivals), thanks to compelling campaign promises such as the pledge to dump the entire penny value of the student budget onto the ground and allow students to scoop up whatever they could get with a pail and shovel (hence the name of their party). Mallon and Varjian had also promised to buy the Statue of Liberty and bring it to Wisconsin. Being men of their word, they actually made good on their campaign vow, much to everyone's surprise.

Varjian claimed that 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 was for the statue to appear overnight, but it actually took three days to erect (ensuring that absolutely 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.

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. But Varjian always denied this suggestion.

Whatever the symbolic meaning of the statue, its presence caused the enemies of the P&S party (and there were many of them) to see red, especially when it became known that Mallon and Varjian had spent $4500 of student funds on its construction. The enemies of the P&S party, who were well represented on the staff of the student newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, felt that Mallon and Varjian were nothing more than clowns who had hijacked the student government and were proceeding to make a mockery of it.

The Daily Cardinal spearheaded a campaign accusing Mallon and Varjian 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. 60 students staged a rally to demand their dimes, and Varjian obligingly wrote each of them a check for ten cents.

But the Daily Cardinal was not to be satisfied by this concession. It continued to denounce the statue for three weeks until March 2 when unknown arsonists torched Lady Liberty in the middle of the night and burned her to the ground. Mysteriously, the Daily Cardinal had a photographer on hand to record the burning, even though it denied any involvement in the deed.

Though they lost their statue, the P&S party got their revenge by winning re-election to head the student government again the following year, and the next February they gleefully rebuilt the statue. This time it cost over $6000 to construct. But while the second Lady Liberty eluded any would-be arsonists, it did not escape the notice of the bureaucrats at the Department of Natural Resources, and so it had to be removed.

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 even 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, brilliant spectacle of Lady Liberty sticking her head up above the Wisconsin ice alone earns this prank a place in the top ten college pranks of all time.

Incidentally, the P&S party, while campaigning, had also promised that if elected they would cover the lawn outside the University's administration building with pink flamingoes. They made good on this pledge also.