Legendary UW-Madison prankster Leon Varjian died from a heart attack at 64 in his Wood-Ridge, New Jersey home Tuesday, according to a UW-Madison release.
Varjian attended UW-Madison beginning in fall 1977 and established himself as a notable figure on campus through his wide array of hijinks.
For one of Varjian's more notable pranks, he and a friend campaigned for seats and won as the president and vice president of the Wisconsin Student Association, referring to themselves as the Pail and Shovel Party. The name came from the promise to convert the university’s budget to pennies, dump it on Library Mall, and allow students to dig in with pails and shovels.
Even current UW-Madison students may recognize an original Varjian prank, when he covered Bascom Hill with 1,008 pink plastic flamingos on the first day of classes in 1979. This iconic prank is recreated each year and the plastic flamingo is now recognized as the official bird of Madison.
Varjian’s pranks reached a national level when he placed a giant paper-mache Statue of Liberty head on a frozen Lake Mendota. However, according to the UW-Madison release, the first statue was burned down by a student who was angered over the party’s waste of student money.
Former UW-Madison Chancellor Irving Shain spoke fondly of Varjian’s time at UW-Madison.
The two became friends after Varjian barged into Shain’s office without an appointment and began rubbing his elbow against Shain’s arm, so that he could tell people he had been “rubbing shoulders with the chancellor.”
“A little amusement on the side is always to be appreciated,” Shain said in the release. "I did not take any offense from what those guys were doing.”
