Norman North HS first day glued door prank

Norman North High School had a sticky situation during their first day of class. After arriving at campus, the school's staff realized that someone put glue into a number of locks on the outside doors. They think it happened when people were on campus for an orientation session Wednesday night.

Robert Carbajal, a Sophomore at Norman North HS said, "I heard about it from a couple of friends of mine, and it was going around. I thought it was pretty funny at first because the doors glued shut, nobody can get in or get out so."

The Norman Public Schools Superintendent said the stupid stuff prank didn't cause any disruption to the school day and the incident was just an "inconvenience". At least 3 doors were glued shut and maintenance crews spent the morning cleaning the locks. It may have happened after people were on campus Wednesday night for an orientation. Students say it was a funny joke.

The district is reviewing surveillance tapes to see if they can identify who was involved, said Roger Brown, assistant superintendent.

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Frustrated Senior Prank

A group of senior high school students were caught in the act of doing a senior shocking pranks in San Diego, California.

Police said, the group was able to make a copy of the San Ysidro High School's master key, reason why they were able to get in the campus premises.

Students were in the act of stacking chairs and desks in the hallway, trying to shape in the numbers “09” symbolizing their graduating year, when suddenly their activity triggered the school's alarm company to call the police.

And before they completed the whole stupid stuff pranks ideas, police arrived making everything else dwindle. The authorities told that students who were 18 will be charged of trespassing and guys under 18 will only be apprehended for curfew violation.

Students were also ordered to return the furniture to their original location.

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Corona del Mar HS senior prank may lead to suspensions or expulsion

20 Corona del Mar High School senior class students pulled off an intended hilarious Jokes and funny pranks that caused nearly $8,000 worth of damage and could lead to a number of suspensions or expulsions.

The students dumped bleachers and soccer goals into the swimming pool, spray-painted the school walls and doors with some benign and some profane expressions, glued pennies to locks and covered trees with toilet paper last week according to school administrators.

District spokeswoman Laura Boss said the spray paint had to be cleaned or painted over, some locks were broken, and maintenance workers had to fish the goals and bleachers out of the swimming pool. The district hopes to have the campus back to normal before graduation Thursday noting much of the damage has already been repaired.

The 2009 prank’s reception has not been nearly as warm, especially given the recent cuts and the state’s threatened trims to educational funding. School officials believe they have caught all of the kids involved in this year’s prank, and the incident is being investigated before disciplinary action is taken, according to Boss.

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Southern Lehigh HS senior prank of camping inside school walls

17 Southern Lehigh High School students suspended for five days for camping inside an enclosed courtyard and scaling the school walls. Unamused school officials by the seniors latest prank called for police involvement. Three of them may lose their National Honor Society membership.

Senior students leave their senior pranks mark before graduation since it's been a tradition for decades. Nowadays, security measures have been tough and officials have changed on how to react to pranks since the post-Columbine era.

''No question we live in the context of the times, breaking into schools and letting animals loose was a prank in the '70s and '80s. Today, that could be considered a terrorist act.'' Director of the National Association of Secondary Schools, Mel Riddile said.

There has been a long history of pranks at the school, a trend that has progressively become more dangerous.

Friday, Southern Lehigh Superintendent Joseph P. Liberati sat down with a few students and shared the school's perspective. It was followed then by a gathering of about 75 students protesting the punishment resulting from Monday's camping prank.

Riddile said educators are doing more to make expectations and boundaries clear as prank season approaches. A growing number of principals get students involved in school-wide decisions. Liability is another concern. While a prank may be conceived as harmless, things go wrong. Indeed, Southern Lehigh's solicitor, James Bartholomew, said students crossed the line from intended harmless funny pranks ideas and practical jokes to potentially dangerous trespassing when they entered the secured grounds.

Brett Ryan, one of the suspended campers who lost his National Honor Society membership, said the 17 seniors involved planned the overnight camping prank to be ''as harmless as possible.''

Liberati said he hopes to work with students to eliminate year-end pranks and, instead, create events that celebrate the camaraderie of students without risking injury.Despite the controversy, students don't predict the end of senior pranks.

Criminal prosecution waived for senior students vandalism prank

Taking the matter into his own hands, school district Superintendent Wayne Alexander, waived the criminal prosecution for at least 18 students who burglarized and vandalized Hernando High School. Thereby, shielding the students from law enforcement, prosecution and the accountability of the criminal justice system.

He simply called it a "mistake" as he referred to the planned criminal acts carried out by the underclassmen and graduating seniors.

Perpetrators that usually carried out such illegal deeds would have been arrested, fingerprinted, booked into the Hernando County Jail and subjected to the rigors of the court system. The perpetrators likely would have been sentenced to probation, assessed heavy fines, made to pay restitution and issued a large number of community service hours.

When the superintendent waived criminal prosecution, he told those responsible for the break-in and vandalism, as well as the other 17,000 students in Hernando County public schools, that it's just not that big of a deal when students burglarize and vandalize public property. After all, it was just an intended funny tees. A very expensive and shocking pranks to remember.

14 of those involved graduating senior students that perpetrated lesser vandalism will be allowed to walk across the stage at graduation. Though the graduating seniors won't be getting their diplomas until they complete 40 hours of community service at the schools. Still, Alexander has sent the wrong message and set a horrible precedent.

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Cooper high school trampoline seniors 2009 prank

Blaine Walls, a senior at Cooper High School, pulled off his senior prank based on his basic mantra of mischief. That's why he conspired with his friends to buy a trampoline and arrange for someone to leave the school door unlocked after a choir concert late Monday night. They sneaked in and assembled the giant frame in the cafeteria with a calling card a bold "SENIORS 2009" spray-painted on the bounce mat in Cooper red and blue.

Students arrived the next day snickering. Even some staff admitted they found it a tad funny. But some had a different reaction last Friday morning when they found a scoreboard on the roof of the science building, a goal post uprooted and the ramp to a portable building torn away.

Principal Gail Gregg, who has allowed some senior pranks in the past, called that one more serious. "Sometimes pranks cross the line to become vandalism," he said, noting the trampoline incident that involved different students was just senior high jinks. After news reports aired about the vandalism and Crime Stoppers tipsters turned in information, four students went to Gregg and confessed.

Typically, such vandalism at a school can be considered a felony and carry a fine and possible jail time. Gregg said senior pranks don't have to be destructive, which is perhaps why he has allowed sanctioned funny pranks ideas in the past.

Gregg said he had to turn down one prank suggestion when this year's seniors wanted to drive trucks into the hallways. "The fire marshal wouldn't allow it," he said.

But some seniors, such as Walls, say asking for permission defeats the purpose of a prank. That's why Blake Holder and his friends didn't bother to let anybody know when they planned a midnight cookout on campus with hot dogs and a 40-foot Slip 'n Slide. About 1 a.m., he said, an administrator came and told them to leave, but they didn't get in trouble.

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The ghost of senior pranks gone wrong

Bruce Clarke, Old Rochester Regional High School Principal, has enjoyed his tenure at ORR and savoring the last few days before he retires late May of 2007. He is looking forward for delivering his last commencement speech. But about a week before graduation five or six boys, several of them among the school’s top athletes who’d never gotten into any trouble to speak of, thought it would be funny to leave their imprint, via spray paint can, on the back of their shiny, new $49 million school complex.

The pranksters used what ever artistic and poetic skills they possessed and proceeded to spray unkind words about their principal as well as some drawings of male anatomy to accompany their words on the back side of the school building. Thinking that they are under cover in the dark, they were unaware that their identities were being picked up by the surveillance cameras placed around their modern school, recording their deeds and every stupid stuff move they're doing.

They, and unfortunately their respective families, were about to be Punk’d. None of those boys was allowed to attend there high school graduation, which was pain likely felt by the families, as well. The boys also had to clean all their graffiti off a brick wall, which is no easy task. There was likely more involved with the punishment end of it, but school administrators and local police closed ranks to further protect the boys from their foolish misdeeds.

The following year at ORR High, some cleaver kid found out how to access the school’s public announcement system remotely and started to make various announcements from different locations within the school as an end-of-the-year prank.

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Tour de Century senior pranks at Rochester's Century High School

It was all captured in a video they posted on Facebook, a video that helped their principal find and then suspend them from the last week of classes.

A senior prank called the Tour de Century where 70 kids rode bikes and scooters and skateboards through the halls of their high school.

Joann Knuth knows kids want to leave their mark. But as the head the Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals, she says end of the year practical jokes and pranks ideas often go too far, sometimes risking student safety and causing damage to school property.

"They impact the entire school, they may at the moment seem like harmless fun or play, but really in reality it gets to be serious." Knuth said. Especially when police are called, like they were in Portage, Wisconsin when Ryan Hayes and four other students had a food fight in the high school lunch room.

"I think it's pretty funny, I think what we got out of it was way more than we should have." said Hayes. Though, it was no joke when they were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, and fined 172 dollars.

"I was upset he was in a food fight, but I was more upset he got handcuffed and taken away in a police car." said Lee Ann Vesley, Hayes' mother.

But police and the principal say they had to do it, that while even they appreciate the humor, they have to put student safety first. "Schools determine their rules and regulations, and they have the expectation they will be followed until the end of the very last day of school." Knuth said.

In another similar case in Brookfield, Wisconsin, six seniors in the middle of the night built a swing set on the roof of their high school, among them were the valedictorian and salutatorian, and neither of them are being allowed to attend their graduation.

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Pac-Man senior prank in final days at Thurston High School

The four Thurston High School seniors, Garrett Cogburn, Ben Carlisle, Matt Galceran and Jeff Forrest, all Advanced Placement students headed for college in the fall, were all dressed in their homemade 1980's iconic video game Pac-Man costumes and run through the cafeteria, the school courtyard, past classrooms. Most students had no idea who was inside the costumes made of PVC pipe and colored butcher paper.

All classic senior pranks could have dragged a cow into the school gym, or filled the fountain (if the school had one) with detergent, or let rats loose in the cafeteria. None of those funny pranks and practical jokes were likely to please Principal Ed Mendelssohn, though, who thought the Pac-Man prank last Thursday was “very clever” even if he was caught unaware much better than many senior pranks that often involve vandalism or “just making a mess,” Mendelssohn said Monday.

And who would think they’d do it again on Monday? Once more, though, it was a hit.

“Every time I see them running through our school, I laugh really hard, They should run around every day.” said senior Mara McCornack.

Pac-Man began as a video arcade game, and involves a yellow circle with a mouth (Pac-Man) working its way through a maze, scoring points by eating dots and prizes. Pac-Man is chased by “ghosts” with crazy eyes and names like Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, who try and terminate him. It became a worldwide phenomenon.

But why would four high school seniors born in the early 1990s want to emulate the game for a high school prank during the final two weeks of classes?

“I really don’t know, We just thought it would be something really cool and funny to do.”
They spent about two months making the costumes Cogburn said, as he and Carlisle prepared for another run through the Thurston campus.

Carlisle said they all watched some YouTube videos of senior pranks, and saw the Pac-Man one with high school students elsewhere in the country running through their school’s library.

“It’s hilarious,” said Carlisle, who plans to attend and play soccer at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa, this fall, of the experience of running through campus, chasing Cogburn in the yellow Pac-Man costume.

“I thought it was awesome, They put a lot of work into that. It was really fun and everyone really enjoyed it. I don’t think the teachers really enjoyed it, but …” senior Logan Lewis said.

The response from staff and administration has been nothing but positive. One teacher even gave a lecture last week, pointing out that “that’s how you do a senior prank,” Cogburn said, who will study chemical engineering at Oregon State University this fall.

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Keys to a good school prank

Andrew Leinonen, a senior last year at Zion-Benton Township High School and also the mastermind who dressed up as a gorilla and chased 10 of his banana-clad friends through the building as a senior prank were suspended because of the prank.

Students planned protests, and groups such as "Saving the Banana Boys" popped up on MySpace. Media outlets across the country picked up his stupid stuff and funny pranks story as an applauded genius.

"You can't forget a day like that," said Leinonen, now a 19-year-old freshman studying criminal justice at College of Lake County, still basking in the glory.

But the 15-year-old Lockport boy prankster who thought it would be funny to set off a makeshift chemical bomb Monday in a crowded school hallway broke the cardinal rule of pranks.

"That's not a prank,It's a bomb. You don't joke around with that." said Leinonen, expert prankster.

According to Leinonen, the perfect prank meets three standards:

• Nobody gets hurt

• Property isn't damaged

• It makes people laugh

Police said that the 15-year old boy freshman at Lockport Township High School's Central campus, confessed to creating the bomb. The pop bottle filled with household chemicals injured or sickened more than a dozen people.

He will be in juvenile court June 10. He faces up to six years at a state juvenile facility and up to a two-year expulsion from school.

Students need to understand the difference between a prank and a crime said Ken Trump, who trained Lockport Township High School authorities in emergency preparedness after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado and president of National School Safety and Security Service, a Cleveland, Ohio-based school security consulting group.

"Anyone, including even the most notorious prankster teen, needs to be able to make that distinction, They're not putting a lollipop in the middle of the floor. They're putting an explosive device."

And feigning ignorance isn't an option said Trump.

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High-tech senior pranks at high school

It was considered by one of the prank organizers as a "perfect prank" since compared this to some funny tees and pranks ideas, its not like those stupid stuff and shocking pranks that could hurt anyone. It was just simply funny. Though school officials weren't laughing.

Menlo-Atherton High School was delayed for two school hours Friday after senior class prank students arranged to auto-dial 1,700 families at 6:40 a.m. to tell them not to come in until 9:50 a.m. because of a power failure.

The school found it quite alarming since at first they thought that the students had hacked into the computer system to use the school's auto-dial system - a serious behavior code offense if not an illegal one.

But to there surprise it was much easier than that. In short, the students typed "auto dialer" into Google. They learned that there are companies that did that kind of thing.

Students spent some time keying in the phone numbers off the school directory. Which is made available to all students. They filed it into an electronic file and then gave it to the company which collected $150 from classmates to pay for it and waited.

The 45 or so students who participated in the planning and execution did, to be fair, run it by a couple of parents who gave them the green light, according to the graduating senior.

"It was better than Christmas morning," the prankster said. "I was up at 6:30 counting down the seconds to 6:40."

Teachers and administrators then waited for two hours after the first bell for students to show up.

District officials said the school was investigating the incident, which occurred on the last regular day of school before finals start Monday.

"At this time, it is believed that there has been no breach of the school's telecommunications or student information system," said Sequoia Union High School District spokeswoman Bettylu Smith.

The incident followed what the student said was a decoy prank earlier this month that included putting more than 30 plastic traffic signs on the roof of the school to lull administrators into false security. It apparently worked.

"We're pretty happy with the outcome," said the student, who plans to attend community college with the hope of attending Stanford University someday. "Teachers were calling it the best prank at M-A. It's another win for the students."

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Janitor injured in vaseline prank

A janitor working for Galashiels Academy, Linda Gillie had slipped on school stairs suffering a head knock and some bruises to her body. It is thought that a Vaseline had been smeared out on the banister as a prank.

She was treated overnight at Borders General Hospital last Wednesday and is now recovering at home.

Head teacher Kathleen Angus described it as an "unfortunate accident" which would be investigated thoroughly.

Practical jokes and funny pranks like these are not tolerated and being taken seriously by the Council. An investigation is ongoing at a secondary school after the mentioned janitor was injured.

Senior pupils on the verge of leaving the secondary are thought to have been responsible as part of what has now become known as "muck-up" day.

Councillor Catriona Bhatia, a spokeswoman and education convener for Scottish Borders Council, said an investigation was under way and it was possible that some form of action might be taken.

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Senior pranks gone bad at Cardinal Spellman

Some senior students at the Cardinal Spellman High School, a private Catholic school in Brockton, placed condoms on classroom doorknobs, bound school lockers with plastic ties, moved furniture from classrooms into the hallways, and threw papers about. Someone also urinated on the floor. It's all part of the misunderstood tradition of school senior's practical jokes and funny pranks before their farewell at school.

A group of students were let into the building by fellow students at drama rehearsal last Wednesday night. Non-involved students said between 15 and 20 students were involved in the incident.

At Cardinal Spellman, police were called last Wednesday after the drama director and an assistant discovered what appeared to be a senior prank gone too far.

“Teenagers have a hard time with stopping each other and walking away,” Brockton High School Principal Susan Szachowicz said.

Szachowicz barred the senior class president from graduation last year after a prank turned into vandalism.

“When they are in the moment, they are not thinking, ‘This leads to this.’ They know this is a dumb thing to do and still get drawn in,” she said.

As high schools across the region prepare for graduation exercises, principals are also bracing for senior hi-jinks — and hoping teens don’t cross the line from funny to felonious.

“There are certain students that think they rule the school basically,” said Armenta Pierre, 18, a senior from Stoughton. “They think they can do what they want.”

Parents also were not amused.

Last year, a group of Brockton seniors sprayed Silly String and washable paint in the school’s Green cafeteria, squirted ketchup, overturned tables and tore down a bulletin board listing to which colleges seniors had been accepted. The seniors were ordered to pay $594 in cleanup costs, perform five days of community service and were banned from the prom and other senior activities. One student, the class president, was banned from graduation because she became belligerent while serving the second day of her five days of community service.

That, Szachowicz said, should serve as a warning to seniors this year.

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High school flagpole prank gets attention, costs money

Logan-Rogersville High School had a stack of about 30 old car tires dropped over the 50-foot flagpole and labeled "2009" in bright yellow paint. The pranksters wore black outfits and Halloween masks. Surveillance cameras didn't catch a thing. According to alumni they are very familiar with the practices of this pranks ideas.

Although no one was hurt and no property was damaged in the overnight stunt Monday night or Tuesday morning, but still there was a cost attached both in money and manhours.

"Our senior prank hit our custodians the worst," said high school Principal Teresa McKenzie. "And we had to rent a lift from Wildcat Rental to get the tires off." Probably the same lift that the pranksters rented the night before, judging from the marks left on the sidewalk, said one former student.

Most schools have had senior pranks, but rarely are they destructive, officials said. Things like chickens and a pig inside schools were mentioned. Rogersville patrons still laugh about the 15-foot-tall Fiberglas steer that "somehow" got on the roof of the high school about 20 years ago.

Fair Grove High School Principal David Hunter said they'd had a few pranks down through the years. "Unfortunately, it's sometimes part of school, We try to discourage it ... and to not put us in a situation that would cause disciplinary action that would cause someone not to be able to graduate." said Hunter.

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