Cover-up: Students deck out dome with Captain America shield

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Student pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have struck again, drawing inspiration from America’s hottest movie.

MIT students over the weekend draped the university’s signature Great Dome with a giant cloth version of Captain America’s red, white and blue shield.

Their efforts drew a Twitter “Very cool!” from actor Chris Evans, the Massachusetts native who plays Captain America in “Avengers: Endgame.”

The shield went up Saturday night and was taken down Monday morning.

MIT students have for generations centered similar pranks, which they call “hacks,” on the dome.

This photo shows Massachusetts Institute of Technology's signature Great Dome draped with a giant cloth version of Captain America's red, white and blue shield Sunday in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Raymond Huffman via AP

A realistic police cruiser was placed on the dome in 1994. In 1999, it was decked out to look like R2D2, the robot from “Star Wars.”

Raymond Huffman, a 20-year-old from New York’s Long Island, said he didn’t have anything to do with this year’s prank, but posted on YouTube aerial video he shot from his drone of the final product that’s since generated tens of thousands of views.

Huffman said a friend involved in the prank told him the group had spent about six months planning the effort.

The prank tradition isn’t an annual event at MIT and tends to happen spontaneously by groups of students that, for the most part, want to remain anonymous, he added.

“It’s kind of cool to see the hacking culture has been maintained,” Huffman said. “These are things you hear about when you first come to MIT.”