There is a long history at Otterbein of pranks played during the required chapel service that used to be held. Unoriginal things like turning your bulletin into a paper airplane were fairly frequent. When chapel was held in Cowan Hall marbles released at the back would roll slowly and noisily down the concrete floor to the front. My mother tells me that in her day, when services were held in the chapel at the West side of Towers hall (long since gone) it was not unusual for an alarm clock to be hidden among the organ pipes, set, of course, for the middle of the chapel period.

The topper, in my opinion, is the day it rained oats. This was in fall of 1957, my freshman year. Chapel at that time was held for about 20 minutes on Monday through Thursday. Friday during that period students read the just-distributed T&C and/or went to the snack bar in the student union. During this particular chapel the college chaplain was preaching from a lectern placed near the front of an otherwise empty Cowan Hall stage. Midway through the sermon something opened up in the fly-stage above and it began to rain dry oats. It rained on the chaplain, it rained on the lectern, it rained on the microphone, it bounced off the stage onto the floor, and it continued to do so for several minutes. The timing was perfect, the aim was perfect, and the consequence was perfect. The sermon turned into a harangue (delivered from another part of the stage) about how immature and irresponsible we students were; meanwhile students really were trying, with great difficulty and little success, to stifle their laughter.

I think that to anyone observant on that day, the demise of required chapel was visible on the horizon.