5 Senior Pranks That Got People In Tons Of Trouble
by Ian Fortey
As the school year comes to an end, children blossom into the fullness of responsibility and young adulthood all over the land. This ceremonial passing often goes hand in hand with the most hallowed ritual known to halls of education: the "end of the year prank." Nothing says "emotional maturity" more than greasing every flat surface of your school with baby oil. And while many of these pranks are just harmless fun, let's take a moment to appreciate the handful that went so far that they ended up in the news.
A Guy Lists His School For Sale On Craigslist -- Poor Phrasing Gets Mistaken For A Violent Threat
Kylan Scheele, an 18 year old student from Missouri, came up with a prank he assumed would be a surefire knee-slapper: He listed his school for sale on Craigslist for $12,725. Our reasoning may be a bit dark, but we found it hilarious because a solid 60% of Craigslist users are creepers who probably aren't allowed near that school in the first place. Truman High School faculty didn’t think it was funny at all.
Pixabay
Sorry, children are not included with the sale.
The prank itself didn't really bother the authorities -- it was a single phrase found in his reason for the sale. He said it was being sold "due to the loss of students coming up." What he meant was a tongue in cheek joke, referring to the fact that the students were graduating, and therefore, the school was losing students. But because of the insane amount of school violence in the news, his poor phrasing was taken as a threat.
The school suspended Scheele for the remainder of the school year (3 days) and barred him from even attending his own graduation. It just goes to show that if you're going to play a prank in today's atmosphere, you'd better be damn sure that it can't be misconstrued for darker intentions.
A Kid Accidentally Sets Off The School's Fire Sprinklers And Gets Charged With $48,000 In Damages
Canadians, as you know, are renowned for their irresponsible pranking. Celine Dion's fame is a direct result of a Canadian prank that got out of hand. Also, a 14-year-old in British Colombia thought it would be funny to padlock a sprinkler at his school. The article doesn't make it clear why he was doing it, but as far as we can deduce, it sounds like he found an open padlock and just wanted to attach it to the sprinkler so it would be difficult to retrieve.
Brandon Leon via Wikimedia Commons
Or maybe he was just afraid someone would steal the sprinkler?
Seems kind of tame, right? Well, the padlock wasn't the problem. After jumping to put the lock through the metal loop in the sprinkler, he jumped again to try to actually lock it in place. This ended up triggering all the sprinklers to go off to the tune of $48,000 in damages. Which the kid's parents had to pay.
Mom and Dad argued in court that the school should pay the damages, because if they didn't want the kid to do that, they should have done something to prevent it. That's called the "I wouldn't have murdered you if you had stopped me from murdering you" defense. It didn't work, and we're assuming that the kid probably got grounded until he was 68.
A Vandalism Prank Gets 100 Students Banned From Graduation And Several Authority Figures Fired
One of our favorite mottoes is, "Go hard or go home," but we're fully aware that in the wrong situation, that advice could get you in serious trouble. That's what happened with a school prank that went too far at Sequoyah High School in Tennessee.
The students here didn't just prank the school, they turned it into a full-on epic battle sequence from the end of a Marvel movie. It was such a cataclysmic orgy of destruction that it literally changed lives.
The first wave of students into the school did little more than glitter-bomb the place, which is adorable but not super noteworthy. Things got weirder when toilets were filled with goldfish and people peed on the walls, which is not what you should do with either toilets or walls. Then things went straight up wonky when doorways were booby trapped with baby oil and marbles. It was that last prank that led to three school employees filing compensation claims after they slipped and were injured.
Pixabay
No reports of banana peels being used.
Now so far you can see where this series of pranks went off the rails, but it's the infrastructure of the whole thing that makes it ridiculous. This wasn't one kid. This wasn't 10 kids. This was 100 kids (all of whom ended up being banned from their own graduation), and several authority figures were involved.
The principal, who knew the kids were planning this, was suspended from work. A local sheriff's deputy who was working as security at the school, let the kids in and even helped carry some of their prank supplies. He was fired. Two other cops from a neighboring town came to the scene and did nothing, and they were suspended from duty. This thing was like a plague of utterly stupid ideas that spread throughout everyone in town. We're pretty sure not even House could have cured it.
A Laxative Prank Sends Teachers To The Hospital And Students To Jail
Remember that scene in Dumb and Dumber when Lloyd slips some laxative into Harry's drink, and then Harry spends a solid two minutes terror-pooping for comedy? Toilet humor is majestic and pure and beloved by peoples all over the world. So you can hardly blame anyone who's seen a laxative and thought it would be a right good knee slapper to make some brownies out of it. That's literally where funny comes from, right? Well, not really.
Students at the Brooklyn School for Global Studies decided to whip up a succulent chocolate and laxative cake for their teachers in the hopes that they would poop a veritable fountain of comedy. Instead, they learned that when you drug someone with a random dose of laxatives without their knowledge, you don't produce comedy so much as a medical emergency.
Pixabay
"Mmmm. Do I detect a hint of coconut milk and poison?"
Two teachers ended up in the hospital and three more got sick because you really can't take laxatives recreationally. It's a terrible idea. As for the students, not only did they get suspended and barred from graduation, they also got arrested and charged with assault.
Honestly, if you look into how the prank unfolded, they deserved some charges. If not criminal, then for crimes against comedy because it was a pretty ramshackle affair. This wasn't melted Ex-Lax in frosting, this was a damn bundt cake with busted Dulcolax tablets inside of it. Little, red Dulcolax chunks that people ate, thinking they were candy bits. One of the teachers claims that her lips and tongue went numb almost instantly. Another developed breathing problems. For a bit, they though the kids had laced the cake with insecticide.
Yeah, it's not exactly funny when the victim ends up in the hospital, thinking they're going to die.
Students Release 72,000 Ladybugs In Their School And Get Slapped With Charges
The brainstorming process behind a school prank isn't necessarily a wide-ranging one. All schools are extremely similar in a structural sense. You have a large building with a lot of rooms and very similar equipment and arrangements of people. There are only so many ways to draw on that canvas.
While some kids will fill a classroom with balloons, six students at a Maryland high school decided to release 72,000 ladybugs. While at first, that sounds innocent and ... well, kind of uncreative, the kids ended up being charged with fourth-degree burglary, property destruction and disruption of school activities.
Turns out that you can't break into a school at 3:00 am, which is what the kids at Chopticon High School did. You also can't release tens of thousands of small, nuisance insects without having to hire someone to clean them all up. It took hours to round up and dispose of the errant insects, and they didn't get them all because how could you? A ladybug is the size of ... well, a ladybug.
Pixabay
"Have you been working out? You look .0001 millimeter bigger than last week."
Look, we understand that senior pranks are going to happen, but before you put one into action, you have to ask yourself a few things:
1) Am I going to get caught?
2) If I do get caught, is it going to cost me money or land me in handcuffs?
3) If that happens, was the prank worth it?
Sometimes, that third question is the most important one.
