Stephen Licata (BSAAE ’83) writes:

Back in April of 1981, several fraternity friends and I were very excited about the upcoming first launch of the Space Shuttle. Coincidentally, the fraternity also had a very large, old water heater that they were looking to discard. These two goals came together one night to make an amusing midnight prank.

On the evening following the successful Shuttle launch, we went down to the basement and stenciled [the incomplete national identifier] "TED STATES" in large black block letters onto the white water heater. Then, with the aid of a butane lighter and the flammable exhaust of a can of hair spray, we decorated the exterior of the water heater with numerous scorch marks. The result was "a large section of the Shuttle booster that had survived a fiery re-entry through earth’s atmosphere." At 3:00 am, several of us carefully loaded the water heater onto a truck and transported it to a grassy area of the Quadrangle just north of the Auditorium. The next day, our "space debris" elicited many chuckles as the University grounds keeping crew dutifully cut the grass around this strange and heavy (at least 200 lbs) object.