Adams House Gong Seized and Returned

Kirkland resident Diego Prats ’04 is a self-proclaimed Batman enthusiast. Early Wednesday morning, Prats got to walk in a superhero’s shoes—or climb, at least—as he scaled Kirkland Houses’s walls to retrieve the Adams House gong.

At 4:30 a.m. Wednesday, Prats read on the Kirkland Open e-mail list that five men were hanging the gong from a Kirkland House flagpole. Prats, who said he was tired of accusations from Mather House residents that Kirkland had stolen the gong, decided to grab the gong and bring it back to Adams to settle the finger-pointing once and for all.

But getting to the gong—suspended 30 feet in the air—required tricky footwork.

Prats went outside equipped with a cane and pocketknife. Prats swung open, then climbed on top of a gate at the entrance of Kirkland. He pulled himself up to a nearby ledge with his cane.

Prats then pulled the gong closer to himself with the cane while holding onto the ledge with his hand.

Finally, while holding onto the ledge with his cane, Prats cut the rope attaching the gong to the flagpole with his knife.

Prats jumped down, grabbed the gong, and presented it to Adams dining hall workers at about 6 am.

“It was pretty scary stuff. I didn’t accidentally want to impale myself with my knife, you know?” Prats said. “But it was 5:30 in the morning, so I was like, what the hell.”

At a ceremony to celebrate the gong’s return, attended by dozens of Adams residents last night, Prats was presented with a bottle of champaign by Adams House Committee Co-Chair Gina M. Bruno ’05.

The gong has been missing since Reading Period.

Bruno blamed the Mather Department of War for the pilfering. At the ceremony, she tore apart pictures of alleged culprits Darren S. Morris ’05, Paul H. Hersh ’04, Zachary A. Corker ’04 and Hunter A. Maats ’04 in a symbolic gesture.

Although Bruno showed the crowd pictures of the Mather residents hanging the gong from the Kirkland flagpole, Maats, who attended the ceremony, still denied to the crowd that his House took the gong.

Adams House Co-Master Sean Palfrey said Adams did not need to resort to what he said were Mather’s underhanded tactics.

“The Adams House style is to win the Straus Cup,” he said, referring to the crowning jewel of intramural competition.

Palfrey then enumerated the ways in which Adams was superior to Mather, eliciting cheers from the crowd.

“We have better parties. We have better students all around. We have better sex,” he said.

Yesterday was not a good day for the continuity of inter-House warfare. The Dunster Department of Peace turned itself in to Harvard University Police Department headquarters with the stolen Eliot banners last night, effectively ending the campaign it instigated against Eliot earlier this week.

The police took no disciplinary action against the students.

At press time, the head of the Dunster Department of Peace, J. Alan Dodd ’05, was unavailable for comment.

—Staff writer Alan J. Tabak can be reached at tabak@fas.harvard.edu.