In September 1979, James Mallon and Leon Varjian welcomed University of Wisconsin students back to campus with 1,008 plastic pink flamingos planted on Bascom Hill. They had won student-government power as the Pail and Shovel Party, promising a good deal of nonsense, and a hillside crowded with lawn ornaments was a fairly legible way of keeping that promise. Thirty years later, Madison made the plastic flamingo its official city bird.[1]

Before the flamingos arrived, Mallon and Varjian had offered students several other ways to enjoy their administration. One early proposal called for converting the student government's entire budget into pennies, scattering them over Library Mall and letting students collect the money with pails and shovels. Varjian had already petitioned to rename the university the University of New Jersey, giving Wisconsin graduates a way to claim an elite East Coast education while remaining comfortably in the Midwest.[2]

During the party's time in charge, from 1978 to 1980, a full-size construction crane helped unveil a five-inch replica of the Washington Monument. Mallon and Varjian also brought a replica of the Statue of Liberty to Lake Mendota, where it appeared submerged in the ice; the first version used chicken wire, plywood and papier-mâché. For the flamingo stunt, they filled Bascom Hill with more than a thousand lawn ornaments. Students returning for the fall semester had been given something to look at, and something worth remembering.[1][2]

By September 1, 2009, the flock had made its way from campus memory onto the city council's agenda. Council members voted 15 to 4 to designate the plastic pink flamingo Madison's official bird, honoring the prank. NPR's report that week described an alderman, himself a university graduate, saying the designation would preserve the event in people's imaginations. A joke that depended on planting 1,008 lawn ornaments had acquired an official place in the city, though the four opposing votes kept the tribute from being unanimous.[1][3]

When the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association later brought flamingos back to Bascom Hill for its Fill the Hill fundraiser, it gave the familiar flock a way to grow. Each plastic bird represented a donor's gift to the university. The same hillside that had accommodated Mallon and Varjian's prank could now show supporters that other people were joining them, one lawn ornament at a time.[4]

In its report on the fundraiser's twelfth consecutive year, the association described a campaign involving more than a hundred campus areas. By then, bringing out the flamingos had become a recurring part of asking people to help the university. Each gift had its representative outside on Bascom Hill: a pink plastic bird among the others.[4]

Sources

  1. Wisconsin Alumni Association: Madison's official city bird
  2. On Wisconsin: 4 UW Pranks
  3. NPR: Pink Flamingos Are Bees Knees in Madison
  4. Wisconsin Alumni Association: Fill the Hill

Illustrative photo: plastic flamingos at a nursery in Austin, Texas, not the Madison prank. Photo: cogdogblog / Wikimedia Commons, CC0. Cropped.