And I have especially and absolutely no patience for or enjoyment of senior pranks. Either the students go too far and cause significant damage/problems/inconveniences or they don't go far enough, and the prank is lame.
The little space in between - where senior pranks are witty, not damaging, not harmful, not derivative, and actually creative - is a space smaller than the blade of a pen knife. It's impossible for any group of students to find that space, to stick the landing on that space.
Senior pranks should not be done.
One of the school districts bordering Princeton found this out this past weekend when twenty seniors - just under a quarter of their graduating class of eighty-seven - were arrested for breaking into Lockland High School (one of the twenty hid in the school until the janitorial staff left for the night Thursday and let the others into the building) and trespassing. Their plan - according to the Enquirer article - was to 'move all the books from the library into the cafeteria, but the library doors were locked.'
Wow...that's just hilarious.
Books...
in the cafeteria...
Holy crap, I think I just pooped myself from the laughter.
Instead, officers from Lockland, Evendale, Woodlawn, Wyoming, Reading, and Arlington Heights responded to a neighbor's call about a break-in at the high school. From the first Enquirer article, '[a]t one point, Evendale police even had one student at Taser-point, and a paramedic squad was sent to the school after one student suffered a panic attack, according to Hamilton County emergency communication reports.'
The dumbest part of the whole thing is the parent - whose younger son is at Princeton High School - who 'said he knew ahead of time his son was going to participate in a prank at the school and that the teen’s mother even dropped him off at the school.'
And the parent are complaining that '[t]he police have blown it out of proportion. [The students] did not break in. They were let in. Yes, that’s trespassing, but it goes on every year.'
C'mon, folks. These kids will be - assuming that they're prosecuted and convicted - guilty of breaking and entering and trespassing. They'll get their diplomas - they've earned the credits, taken the classes, made the grades - but they'll graduate as felons-to-be.
And I'm just fine with Lockland's plans to deny the students the privilege of walking in their graduation ceremony and intent to let the police/prosecutors/whoever prosecute the kids to the fullest.
They don't deserve the chair or anything, but they certainly deserve far more than a slap on the wrist for this one.
The side bar on the first Enquirer article, by the way, has a nice little list of other senior pranks that have gone wrong at Cincinnati area schools in the past decade or so.
Update: Reasonable middle ground was found.
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