Senior pranks used to be fun, not felonies. Retro Charlotte looks back at past pranks.
Kids these days.
With a few weeks until high school graduates toss their caps, some are tossing trash along every inch of their school’s halls — or tossing their futures out the window.
Senior pranks, officials say, have gotten out of hand. They no longer bring smiles and laughs. They bring tears and thousands of dollars in damages.
Last weekend students blindsided three local high schools with “pranks” that were really just plain vandalism, officials said. In one case, at Mallard Creek High, 50 students were charged.
It wasn’t always like this.
Senior pranksters raked up some kind of reputation by 1971, according to a January article about a senior science project briefly mistaken for a prank.
But their stunts apparently didn’t make it into the news until early 2000s teens came along. They knew how to ruffle some feathers — and soak some principals — but never faced criminal charges, newspaper archives show.
The Great Water Balloon Fight of 2007 left Pittsboro’s Northwood High School’s reigning vice principal soaked by an exploding balloon, according to a News & Observer article. Students got hit with 20 hours of community service, and administrators threatened to hold diplomas until the hours were clocked.
Rivaling seniors were the suspected culprits in the Rock Hill 2005 case of the missing “giant weenie” and jumbo pig.
Rock Hill High School seniors stole Bucko’s Restaurant’s giant porker statue, the sheriff and principal said. Their prank also came with a side of super-glued locks, slicked sidewalks and strewn fish heads and intestines, according to a 2005 article.
Ebenezer Grill’s giant hot dog sign wasn’t found, though, despite it’s owner’s plea and reward: a “limousine ride and picnic lunch for two at Lando Beach” in Chester County, S.C. to anyone who “’fessed up.”
Hickory High School’s Class of 2001 came closest to the level of destruction seniors recently reaped on their schools. About 50 students egged the building, adorning it with toilet paper and construction trash in the process, police said. They didn’t faced charges though.
In 2009, Hilton Head seniors almost got away with vandalism, and it wouldn’t have phased their principal — who said he’d seen worse. Police told them to clean up their artwork, which was water-soluble, according to an Island Packet article. The 30 students left it cleaner than when they found it, they told reporters at the time.
How bad have senior pranks gotten?
Kids know what they’re doing is wrong, said Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s Sgt. JD Williams. They must. They’re breaking and entering and destroying property that isn’t theirs, he said.
“When I was in high school, they would have a senior day where students would get to participate in agreed-upon activities involving water balloon fights and silly string,” said Williams. “That is not causing any damage to the school or potential injuries to the students.”
Two Monroe County men plotted a “senior prank” that left Sun Valley High School with more than $20,000 in damages and put them in jail with felony charges, according to police.
One Cleveland County principal seemed to have faith in Burns High School seniors when she reportedly handed them the keys to the school Thursday night. Instead, students damaged teachers’ personal items, created safety hazards by slicking baby oil everywhere and left behind a mess that had teachers in tears Friday morning. At the same school more than 10 years ago, a midyear prank shut down Burns High School’s football field after a herd of goats left administrators dealing with E. Coli concerns.
