In sound tradition, MIT students launch piano from dorm roof
If a piano, weighing as much as one does, falls some number of feet from the roof of a residence hall at MIT, sometime toward the end of the spring semester, does an undergraduate student remember to drop their classes before it’s too late?
The answer to that question, regardless of what it may be, hasn’t changed the fact that for the last 50 years that’s precisely how MIT students have marked the end of the add/drop period at the research university — by dropping a piano from the roof of a residence hall.
“This event has happened regularly since 1972 and is something that both campus and community members enjoy. Each year we have a crowd of students, alumni, and neighbors that come out to watch and take part in the event,” student organizer Hannah Donner, a sophomore, said in an emailed statement.
This year was no exception, when on Tuesday a donated piano was dropped from the roof of Baker House to no small amount of fanfare and in honor of a prank from 50 years ago.
No working pianos were harmed in the marking of this un-solemn tradition, Donner said.
“Any piano used at this event is no longer functioning and is beyond repair,” she said.
And so, as is tradition, shortly after 4:30 p.m. on a cool April day, a piano was pushed down a purpose built ramp to fall ungracefully six stories (about 10 Smoots) to the ground below.
Somewhere on campus tomorrow, one imagines a student’s heart dropping nearly as far when they realize they can no longer drop that freshman seminar they haven’t bothered to attend.
If only they had listened to the sound of the falling piano!
Maybe next year.