Penn State is full of students who strive to not only create new ideas, but bring back ideas that were once popular. Jake Iwinski is one of those students.

The Penn State Monty Python Society first met in November of 1978, with a goal of emulating the British comedy group, which created the 1969 sketch comedy television show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”

The club was active for many years, and there was one particular member, Alice Wilson, who took the club by its reigns. She was a president and a historian of the society during her time at Penn State.

However, the Penn State Monty Python Society disbanded in the early 2000s, and it was unclear why. It was only within the last year that the club was reestablished, and it is all because Inwinski (junior – communication arts and sciences).

Iwinski was notified of the club after a number of faculty and staff, who did not know at the time that the club was disbanded, suggested the club to him. They thought his personality “would click right with the club.”

Iwinski wasted no time searching for the club, but it was nowhere to be found.

“What I am assuming is there was just a loss of interest, like the officers maybe did not pass on their roles,” Iwinski said. "Although faculty members remembered the club, there were no previous members [on campus].”

With some research of the club from compiled newsletters donated by Wilson to the special collections section of the library, and an actual phone call with Wilson herself, the club was officially reactivated and reconstituted by Iwinski on Jan. 7, 2019.

“I was using the same framework and ideas of the first society, but for all intents and purposes, starting a brand-new club,” Iwinski said.

Although the first official meeting recognized by Penn State was last semester, the new Penn State Monty Python Society has been meeting for over a year, and according to Iwinski, with some help from other officers of the club, they collectively “brought the club back from the dead.”

So, besides emulating the British comedy group Monty Python, some may wonder what exactly The Penn State Monty Python Society is.

According to OrgCentral, the purpose of the Penn State Monty Python Society is to “promote the appreciation of British humor, as exemplified by the comedy group, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” and to provide satiric and comedic entertainment to the campus.”

There is way more to it than just that.

In the society’s discord, there are two other main goals of the club; “to make Penn State silly through jokes, performance arts, stunts and just generally having a great time,” and to never make fun of people.

The discord states, “We can make fun of a lot of things, including the state of South Dakota, but we never target a single person or small group as the butt of a joke.”

“We in our society are so overly focused on what other people think about us,” Iwinski said. “We spend so much time thinking about what others think about us, that we don’t ever spend time to think about what we want for ourselves. The Monty Python Society may just be a group of misfits just having shenanigans on campus, confusing some people and making other people laugh.”

Iwinski said that if he could get students who are shy and may care too much about what others think of them to participate in silly performances in public, they will realize that the public is not opposed to it—most people are either indifferent toward it or in support of it.

“People that join the Monty Python Society are not people that overly value what other people feel about them, or their social status,” Iwinski said. “The Monty Python Society attracts people that just want to have fun in a wholesome way. We want to have a community that everyone is just there and having a good time.”

Hojin Ryoo, the Master of Spiders, also known as the Webmaster of the Monty Python Society, said he joined the club to release his stress from college.

“My favorite thing about the club is our enthusiasm,” Ryoo (junior – applied data science) said. “Everyone's really invested in the pranks, in the activities we do, and even though they are pranks, we take them very seriously and make sure that they're something that people will enjoy and have fun with.”

Some students on campus may already be familiar with the club’s antics.

According to Iwinski, the most significant and first event they did as a club was post flyers throughout the campus that read, “Missing! 5 yards on 4th down,” including a description of former quarterback Trace McSorely.

In bold print on the bottom it said, “If seen please contact James Franklin.”

This, of course, was in response to Penn State’s loss against Ohio State last year in the annual White Out game.

“The Monty Python Society planned to make posters mocking the team for about two weeks,” Iwinski said. “The moment the five-yards on fourth down incident happened right at the end, immediately we knew as a club this is the moment we have been waiting for, so that very night we drew up five mock ideas.”

The posters were widely spread throughout social media.

The Penn State Monty Python Society also hosted other events throughout the year, including one called “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

At this event, The Monty Python Society took over the HUB on Halloween, the purpose, however, was not to celebrate Halloween, but rather Christmas.

“We were doing this to spread holiday cheer and distribute candy canes to all of the people that are willing to deal with our festive nonsense,” Iwinski said. “Basically, we said, ‘let’s celebrate a holiday on the wrong day, because we think that is funny.’”

The club dressed up as festively as possible, and they received a mixture of reactions from passersby including “Merry Christmas,” “Can I get a picture with you?”, “That’s weird” and “But it's Halloween,” followed by the club’s response: “What is that?”

Along with the club’s events, students may recognize Iwinski around campus participating in his own antics. Iwinski is known mostly known as two characters: Protect-the-Seal Guy, and Roller Blade Guy.

He may be recognized rollerblading around campus in 80s clothing carrying a boombox or dressed in a suit imitating a guard, while “protecting” the Penn State seal in the HUB—as it is a Penn State tradition to not step foot on the seal as an act of respect.

“I said you know what, what would be really funny, is if someone took this tradition—the thing that no one cares about at all—and took it way farther than any logical right than it has to be. So, of course that ends up being me protecting the seal.”

The future of The Penn State Monty Python Society is looking bright since its reestablishment, as according to Iwinski, it has grown to 79 members. But with the club’s history of disbandment, Iwinski hopes to have the future of the new society have a different outcome.

“It really is important for me to make it a club that can actually last without me or any of the other officers,” Iwinski said. “The Monty Python Society is hopefully now a re-founding of a club that will continue to be at Penn State and do silly things for many years into the future.”