Romney was a college prankster

Romney had a well-earned reputation as a joker in college. His "hijinks and pranks" included arranging formal dinner parties on the streets, sliding down golf courses on huge ice cubes, dressing up as a police officer, interrupting courting couples in automobiles, and, less lightheartedly, pinning down another student and shaving off his hair. After learning that during his senior year of high school, he had played a key part in a bullying episode against a fellow student who was thought to be gay, Mitt Romney apologized for his behavior.

Romney tried to limit the consequences by using a radio interview to apologize to anyone harmed by what he referred to as "pranks" after his campaign managers maintained the presumed Republican nominee for president had no knowledge of any of the events described in the Washington Post piece. Romney was defended by several Republicans, who charged that the Democrats and certain media outlets had blown out of proportion an event involving a schoolboy.

Romney stated he was not very concerned by the Post article during the radio interview. When questioned about the Lauber incident, he said, "You know, I don't." He added that there was no homosexual connotation to the pranks he played. "Whether someone was homosexual, that was the furthest thing from my mind back in the 1960s, so that was not the case." Students who claimed to have been the targets of pranks "didn't come out of the closet until years later," he said. It all happened a long time ago, according to Romney. "As for the teasing and the taunts that go on in high school, that's a long time ago. For me, that's about 48 years ago, if there's anything I said that was offensive to somebody I'm certainly sorry about that, very deeply sorry about that," he said.