Across American high schools, senior pranks have gained notoriety for both their comical and destructive consequences. While a good laugh may seem like the perfect way for seniors to say goodbye to this chapter of their lives, some believe they can often go too far. As graduation day approaches, the CHS Class of 2024 must decide when these pranks could potentially cross the line.
Senior pranks started in 1936 and since then have become a common tradition in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, where the senior class concludes the school year by organizing a prank. Common pranks over the years have included making fake announcements via a loudspeaker, setting up barbecues and tents or shooting people with water guns.
Some schools encourage the practice as a tradition while others stay true to their school policy or fear legal action when the joke goes too far. CHS
Principal Emily Bonilla falls on the latter side.
“I’m not supposed to be encouraging senior pranks,” Bonilla said. “They are technically against district policy.”
Despite many schools struggling to follow through with the tradition, CHS has had no shortage of successful pranks over the years. At the height of the Harry Potter franchise, CHS was transformed into Hogwarts, with every classroom’s door having the name of a Hogwarts teacher and the reason it suits them. Students would walk the halls with classmates dressed in the colors of Hogwarts houses and play the franchise’s fictional sport: Quidditch.
Plenty of upperclassmen and faculty members reminisce on the Class of 2020’s prank, where pictures of former Principal James Gleason were stuck all around the school: on lockers, the stairwells and even on streamers. Senior Elisabeth Weiss of Tinton Falls remembers it fondly.
“That class was the COVID class, so they didn’t have all of the seniors, so Gleason really didn’t mind. He kind of just let it go,” Weiss said.
Students, including senior Avery Decker of Monmouth Beach, agree that a major trademark of a good senior prank is the impact. She says that the Class of 2022’s prank, which involved cleaning up a barbecue before anyone got to school, was disappointing.
“It’s nice that they didn’t bother anyone,” Decker said. “But where’s the impact?”
However, the pranks that suffer from a lack of excitement aren’t half as bad as those that are genuinely dangerous and even illegal. History teacher Sharyn O’Keefe recalls her time as senior class advisor for High Technology High School as she tried to protect them from litigation after breaking into Brookdale Community College.
“I spent that day and another three days working with the police and the administration to keep seniors from being arrested,” O’Keefe said. “It was all harmless, but everything on the campus is Brookdale’s property.”
Additionally, many students recall the fate of the Academy of Allied Health and Science, where students ruined the floor with their prank. CHS English teacher Mrs. Colvin feels that destruction of property crosses the line.
“I haven’t seen anything like that at CHS,” Colvin said.
Senior pranks are at their best when students find a creative way to have fun without hurting anyone.
“It should be creative, it should be fun, and it shouldn’t stop learning,” Bonilla said. “When it’s creative and fun, those are its best attributes.”
