We heard rumors that yesterday morning, some freshmen found themselves greeted by members of “Leverett House,” with housing day letters and Leverett t-shirts in hand. Except they weren’t members of Leverett House. And those weren’t actually Leverett’s housing day shirts.

Indeed, after some investigation, it looks like the pranksters were none other than members of the Harvard Lampoon. Surpriiiise. The prank caused much commotion throughout Leverett House after it was found that these fake Leverett t-shirts displayed an inappropriate joke connected with the 9/11 tragedy; an image of the Leverett Towers are printed on the shirts with the words “Lever Forget.” Below are photos of the shirt and fake housing day letter.

Um...something tells me this is not OK.

After the jump, an email that was sent to the Leverett community from its House Master, Howard Georgi.

We are very sorry that for some of you, the fun of this wonderful day was marred by a stupid and tasteless hoax in which fake Leverett T-shirts were distributed making a connection between our towers and 9/11. We have had many students at Leverett over the years who were touched deeply by the 9/11 disaster.  It would have been obvious to anyone with even rudimentary morals and decency that this immature hoax was cruel and inappropriate. Obviously, Leverett students and staff had nothing to do with this.

It is also worth saying that we have nothing directly to do with our actual Leverett shirts. We are simply proud to wear them.  But we are also proud of the Leverett House Committees and students who have, year after year, produced shirts that have been clever but not tasteless, and funny without poking fun AT anyone. That is indicative of the spirit of Leverett House.

We hope to see you all this evening at our Community Night dinner and the revels that will follow at 8pm.

Chief, Coach and Lauren

Leverett Masters and Resident Dean

Way to go, Lampoon. Way to go.

Photos and scan c/o Voice staff.