Senior pranks have long been legendary throughout American high schools. There are stories of seniors hiring mariachi bands to follow their principal around for a day and classrooms of seniors showing up in inflatable dinosaur costumes. There have been Post-it note takeovers, desk swaps, and balloon invasions. All it takes is an idea in the right (or wrong) hands.
At Abington, the class of 1985 may have taken the cake with the best senior prank. Imagine walking into school, only to look up and see a car on top of the bus loop! While the class of 1985 never shared all of their secrets, they did share a photo of this fantastic prank. Apparently, one of the teachers at the time had an identical car, making it appear as though the one on the roof had actually been vandalized. According to a notecard describing their plans on that legendary night, they explained that their prank “succeeded, but with great difficulty.”
Rumor has it that the Abington class of 1979 actually climbed up the water tower that overlooks the school and painted a message on the exterior of the structure as well as on the gym’s roof. Despite these rumors, pictures of this prank are hard to find. Yearbooks don’t tend to feature acts of vandalism.
Although the pranks at Abington have been relatively harmless, there have been many senior pranks gone wrong over the course of time at other schools. In June of 1997, Elizabeth Ferdandez and Julian Guthrie from the San Francisco Examiner wrote an article about this time-honored tradition, noting: “the rite of passage known as the senior prank is at its best sophomoric and mildly seditious.” While usually all fun and games, sometimes pranks have gone too far. In one instance, a prank ended in tragedy when a group of high school students on a senior trip all entered a water slide at once to break an annual class record for how many students could fit inside. Unfortunately, the weight caused the slide to snap and send students falling, including one who died.
Thankfully, most pranks are more benign. Richard Tribou of the Daytona Beach Journal pointed out that class pranks often involve farm animals, such as leading cows up flights of stairs (and then having the school struggle to get them down) or bringing in 4 pigs with numbers painted on their sides: 1, 2, 3, and 5 (and causing the administration to search all day for the nonexistent pig number 4).
Animals are not always needed for great pranks. In researching this lore, students have put billboard-like “For Sale” signs outside their schools, relocated principals’ offices to the middle of the football fields, and placed 250 alarm clocks set to go off simultaneously in lockers throughout the building. Tribou noted, “A senior prank should be ingenious, but not harmful.” All it takes is an idea…
