Harvard students often consider themselves a cut above, but a few this week decided to reach below the belt with a prank against Women Appealing for Change (WAC) featuring "wife with the knife" Lorena Bobbitt.

In the second joke played on WAC in as many months, signs which appeared in the Yard on January 11 proclaimed Bobbitt as WAC's "Woman of the Year" and advertised a bogus speech.

According to the signs, the speech--titled "Severing Ties from Manhood"--will occur tonight in the Lyman Common Room.

Bobbitt, who is charged with maliciously wounding her husband by severing his penis, currently faces trial in Manassas, Va., making a trip to Cambridgenearly impossible.

WAC had nothing to do with the posters,according to Co-Chair Francie B. Walton '94.

"I hope that people that are familiar with uswould know it wasn't us putting up the signs,"said Walton.

But Walton saw the posters as harmless. "Ialmost don't think they [the signs] are worthy ofa response," she said, laughing. "I don't see thisas a hostile prank against us."

Some people, however, still hope Bobbitt willshow up in Radcliffe Yard. Shar N. Van Boskirk'97, a Lyman Common Room staff member, said shereceived three serious inquiries from LorenaBobbitt fans. They wanted to know whether Bobbittwas actually going to appear.

Van Boskirk said a caller even argued with herwhen she said the Common Room had scheduled nospeakers on January 14.

The caller insisted that "a very reliablesource" had said that Bobbitt was going to speak,according to Boskirk. "I thought it was prettyfunny," she said.

Walton was unwilling to speculate who theperpetrators of the poster prank might be,dismissing the signs as lightweight humor. "Iwouldn't group this [prank] in the same categoryas the former," said Walton.

In December, initiates of the Delphic finalclub allegedly posed as Harvard Independentreporters to hold a mock interview and photosession with Walton