CALTECH'S HOOKEY HIJINKS : FACULTY, PUPILS TEASED BY TRICKS ON `DITCH DAY'.

Byline: Susan Goldsmith Daily News Staff Writer

Teams of Caltech students carrying tools, squirt guns, maps and giant boards took over campus Wednesday as part of the annual collegiate all-day puzzle and prank ritual known as ``Ditch Day.''

The event tests students' ingenuity and chutzpah as they work to decipher clues and carry out tasks devised by outgoing seniors.

Part ``Animal House'' and part science fair, this year's Ditch Day had teams of students building elaborate contraptions, reading Morse code signals, creating a replica of Stonehenge, and dropping thousands of toy Super Balls off the roof of the 10-story library.

The California Institute of Technology is one of the premiere science and engineering schools in the country, challenging undergraduates students with a rigorous four years of study.

On Wednesday, the ordinarily serious campus was transformed into a world of wacky pranks and high-tech hijinks.

``Ditch Day is the only glimmer of light in our otherwise miserable lives,'' said sophomore Kurt Klein, a chemistry major who was thrilled to be out of the lab and to be homework-free for the day.

Klein and his team spent part of the afternoon building a water assault vehicle equipped with a sump pump, gas generator and hoses for a planned water fight later in the day.

On another part of the campus, about 12 students were busy erecting a giant puzzle called ``The Tower of Annoy'' - a 10-foot-tall version of the children's ``Tower of Hanoi'' toy.

Once the device was built, the team had to move 50-pound concrete slabs from one platform to another, making sure the smaller pieces were underneath the larger ones.

``Before we started building, we figured out how to do it,'' said Mike Davies, a sophomore in math and engineering. ``It's going to take 15 moves.''

The ``Wintermute'' team sat transfixed on the lawn, focused on translating the Morse code message hidden in the blinking light before them.

Earlier in the day, the Morse code beacon directed them to a local computer store where they purchased a copy of Microsoft's 1996 ``Cinemania'' software program.

Back on campus, the team was amazed to discover a hidden clue programmed into the software by a Caltech alumnus. The secret message discovered in the computer program directed them to a neighborhood Chinese restaurant. There they found new clues shoved into their fortune cookies.

Miles Shuman, a 17-year-old physics major who was on the Wintermute team, was impressed.

``The clue in Cinemania said, `Go to Grandview Palace for lunch. Tell them you're on Mike Radford's stack.' ''

According to Caltech Ditch Day lingo, a ``stack'' is the word used to describe the clues and puzzles left by the seniors as well as the teams of students.

Caltech's Dean Rod Kiewiet walked around campus Wednesday with a devilish grin. He seemed to be enjoying the day's pranks and puzzles as much as the students.

``I judged a Slip and Slide contest this morning, and I made a video where the dean is murdered for a mystery stack,'' he said, pushing his hair away from his head and baring a colorful, temporary tattoo that had been pasted on him earlier in the day. ``And I discovered a Stonehenge replica in my office this morning!''

Kiewiet said Ditch Day has been an annual tradition at Caltech since the 1950s.

``We don't have homecoming here because there's no football team, so the students plan for this all year,'' he said. ``The stacks have become very elaborate over the years.''

The ritual began in the '50s when seniors ditched their classes, leaving their rooms vulnerable to mischief. To make sure the underclass students could not get into their rooms, the seniors began devising elaborate locks and devices known as stacks to keep them out, Kiewiet said.

``Students would pour concrete and use special alloy metals,'' he said. ``We used to call those the brute-force stacks.''

But over time, the tradition evolved into a day of puzzles and pranks all devised by the seniors, who were nowhere to be seen on campus Wednesday.

Ditch Day tradition mandates that any senior caught on campus is fair game for capture and can be duct-taped to a tree for the day if found, he added.

The day has become such a tradition on campus that it is advertised in the college's literature and has become the stuff of lore among the freshman class, said sophomore Kurt Klein.

Although many of the pranks and puzzles are intellectually challenging, several involve humiliating, harassing and embarrassing faculty members, Kiewiet said.

``These kids are poking fun at all their tormentors,'' he said. ``There's an anti-authority element to all this.''

Just as the dean walked off, a group of students dressed as devils in red capes and horns came by, handing out slips of paper that read, ``Satanism: The only religion where you get to kill your parents.''

Nineteen-year-old Ann Stimmler, a freshman in math, looked as if she was having the time of her life on Ditch Day. She got to put a tattoo on the dean's forehead and romped around in one of the campus's fountains.

``The whole day is exhilarating,'' she said, with a huge grin.

Proudly, she added, ``We're the stack that dropped 2,000 Super Balls off the 10-story library this morning.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1 -- color) Caltech's dean, Rod Kiewiet, is a pop ular target for pupils on Ditch Day.

(2) Caltech pupils decipher a senior's puzzle, or ``stack,'' involving Morse code Wednesday.

David Crane/Daily News