# Best senior pranks? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 4, 2003, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613 "2003-01-04T15:39:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![iwire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a87d85/32.png) [@iwire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iwire)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/21 "2003-01-05T00:51:44Z")
This is pretty lightweight but I enjoyed it. I was in the AV club— I will wait for the laughing to stop. So I had access to the schools equipment and the knowledge of how the schools PA system was set up. So I made some cassette tapes borrowed an amp we would use for football games and basically back fed the PA system. Three Fridays in a row My timer would start the tape player and turn on the amp I could only get about 90 minutes of music on a tape but it was fun for that time as it was loud enough you could not teach over it and at the office end they could do nothing to stop it. Short of turning all the power off they would have had to find the equipment which I had hidden in the ceiling of the auditorium. ---
**Author:** ![cornflakes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/22 "2003-01-05T01:05:26Z")
[QUOTE] \*Originally posted by hajario \* \*\*I am fairly sure the jello thing isn’t possible either. Probably an urban legend. I am skeptical of this one too: [quote] Back in 1967 or so, the dad of one of my brother’s friends ran a construction company. Another guy’s dad ran a junkyard. The first guy “borrowed” a cherry picker from his dad and the second guy got a bunch of used tires. The school district had to cut the flagpole down the next day to get the tires off. > [@](#): > > Why didn’t they just cut up the tires? > > Haj \*\* Would you rather cut up one pole or scores of tires? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/23 "2003-01-05T01:47:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by cornflakes \* > \*\*Would you rather cut up one pole or scores of tires? \*\* I would rather cut scores of tires than cut one pole, buy a new pole and then sink that new pole in concrete. Haj ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/24 "2003-01-05T01:52:34Z")
If the pole was obscured by a large stack of tyres, how would you cut it down? ---
**Author:** ![TVeblen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@TVeblen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVeblen)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/25 "2003-01-05T02:24:27Z")
My high school senior class was fairly united in only one thing: loathing the school. On the last day of classes we (about 80% of us) brought in cheap alarm clocks. We set them all to go off at the same time, then put them in our lockers. It was a cavernous building, with looooong hallways lined with the metal lockers. It made The Echo Chamber From Hell when all those alarms started going off. It was a beautiful thing. Of course they searched our lockers, with threats of not letting anyone found with a clock to graduate. The putzes\* ran out of steam when they realized they’d have to hold back just about the entire class, including the Honor Society and Student Senate. - The school administrators; some of the teachers were fine and had suffered under these idiots worse than anybody. We found out later some of them thought it was hilarious. Veb ---
**Author:** ![soop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@soop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/soop)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/26 "2003-01-05T02:32:14Z")
Pool togeather a large quantity of quarters and superglue them all to the floor after school one day. ---
**Author:** ![mblackwell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5fc32e/32.png) [@mblackwell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mblackwell)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/27 "2003-01-05T02:52:41Z")
Somewhere on the net there is a Quicktime file called aaron’s senior prank that shows kids filling thier school office with packing peanuts, its pretty good. The class before mine put the 7 foot tall gold fiberglass viking on the gym roof. My class didn’t do anything, except for the few dumbasses that broke in and set of fire extinguishers and poured motor oil on the floor. ---
**Author:** ![Angel\_of\_the\_Lord](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/angel_of_the_lord/32/2949_2.png) [@Angel\_of\_the\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angel_of_the_Lord)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/28 "2003-01-05T03:59:02Z")
I don’t think that our school had an official senior prank. I, however, had a fun one… …my junior year of high school, our school’s computer system had just about _no_ real security. They hadn’t yet switched to the eeeevvviiiillll proxy system from Heck, the teachers’ password was well known, and the computers could access the admin mode _really_ freaking easily. I mean, hell, I don’t know jack about computers, and I could do just 'bout anything I wanted to with 'em. Anyways, because of the weird way they used to have things set up, the user settings–or preferences, or something; like I said, I’m not a computer whiz, just a curious little chickie–for the internet browser (which was, of course, ancient) were stored somewhere other than the individual computer. I found out that you could change them with relatively minimal effort. I knew I had to do something with this. I got a free webpage, and set it up as a mirror of my highschool’s homepage, with one difference: a Javascript thing I’d gotten from this one book. The script basically made the computer start calculating Fibonacci (or however it’s spelled) numbers forever. Then, I set it as the homepage for both the Teacher and the Student user things. Our crappy computers already freaked when using Java–this about killed them. It didn’t do any permanent damage, and it was fixed pretty quick–it’s not as though I’d done anything too complicated. But it surely annoyed a whole lot of people. Yeah, I know. I’m pathetic. ---
**Author:** ![Blackeyes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f6c823/32.png) [@Blackeyes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackeyes)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/29 "2003-01-05T04:56:46Z")
I just remembered a mid-term exam pran this year. I distracted one of the APs by being chewed out after school for having a CD player and headphones while the same guys stole a fire extuingisher. It’s still at one guy’s house. ---
**Author:** ![lukaspriest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5a626/32.png) [@lukaspriest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lukaspriest)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/30 "2003-01-05T06:02:55Z")
another one - when I was a junior, a guy from the class above showed up to school right before the morning break started and dumped a whole gallon of canola oil all over the floor of a super high traffic area - the student body managed to track oil into just about every damned room in the school. I heard he later got caught and was forced to put up for the bill to have the whole school’s carpets cleaned. ---
**Author:** ![Cyberhwk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7993a0/32.png) [@Cyberhwk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyberhwk)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/31 "2003-01-06T07:19:35Z")
My father pulled one in his college dormatory where he and a ton of friends actually picked up a small car (might have been stripped down though, not sure) and carried it to the top floor of is dormatory. ---
**Author:** ![Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troy_mcclure_sf/32/4150_2.png) [@Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troy_McClure_SF)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/32 "2003-01-06T08:36:31Z")
[MIT hacks](http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/). Funny, funny stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Blackeyes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f6c823/32.png) [@Blackeyes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackeyes)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/33 "2003-01-06T18:54:10Z")
I swallowed a goldfish once. What? I really did. ---
**Author:** ![Eastern\_Europa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9dc877/32.png) [@Eastern\_Europa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eastern_Europa)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/34 "2003-01-06T20:04:00Z")
One of the best I’ve ever heard of was perpetrated by a friend of mine in high school. His school’s senior-locker hallway featured a large depression where the hall ramped down and then ramped up again a bit later; the Dip, as it was known, had no clear explanation nor any clear purpose, but it was a school landmark. My friend and the school’s other senior theater technicians snuck in one night, armed with boards and linoleum, and seamlessly covered the Dip over. The best part about it? The entire senior class, along with the faculty and administration, was in on the prank and cheerfully informed those underclassmen that asked what happened to the Dip that there never had been such a thing – what the hell were they talking about? Why would there be a dip in the senior hallway, anyway? One can only imagine the effects on easily-influenced freshmen. ---
**Author:** ![Blackeyes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f6c823/32.png) [@Blackeyes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackeyes)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2003, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/35 "2003-01-16T03:55:00Z")
English. We had to memorize a poem and recite it in front of the whole class. Teacher included in the listening. With a stroke of sheer brilliance yours truly writes in pen and ink the entire poem _on the palms of his hands_. It was a Robert Frost poem, for those who are interested; something about a wood and “it was just as the light was beginning to [something]”. Why did I write out the poem on my hands? For a laugh, of course. It greatly amused my friends. And I myself chuckled at my own genius. Boy, it was sure to be a riot today, I thought. “I’d show it to Mrs. Teacherlan” whom I had _friendly_ jabbing contests with on several occasions and looking back was one of my favorite teachers. I recite the poem - beautifully, and keeping my hands on my pockets through the length of it, I might add - but when I finish several classmates exclaim “Look at his hands!” Great, thinks I. The teacher - Mrs. Teacherlan - remains silent the entire time until I sit down again at my desk. She stands up and says “ **Blackeyes** let me look at your hands.” “Why, certainly, Mrs. Teacherlan. However, I don’t see what you might hope… to find… [I begin to desperately lick my palms] on my… hands.” I licked my palms feverishly for four seconds before Mrs. Teacherlan grabs them, inspects them, and gives them back. “Zero. Cheating”. Ouch, I thought. But all was not lost, you see. For I still managed to pass the grading period; albeit a high C/low B but still passing with a not too bad grade considering the circumstances. And we all had a laugh over it and I got the negative attention I so desperately craved at the time. But oh, I had my comeback. Later that year we have another poetry recitation. Shakespeare, in fact. Oh, how I plotted and schemed and schemed and planned and plotted for this chance at revenge. I would have it, I assure you. I spend most of the night before plotting revenge. I thought maybe she had forgotten the last episode by now; but I wasn’t going to let her. Hehehe. I unattentively listen to some of my classmates stand in front and mumble through. I can feel my turn coming up; it’s time to prepare for my Moment. I searched my mind to create this idea _weeks_ in advance and it was time to put it into action. So I grab a… pen. And I write on the palms of my hands _again_. The script is barely finished before Teacherlan calls on me. I rise. I stand and deliver. I was eloquent, peaceful, and charming. I grew a smirk on my face which only grew bigger. Because everyone in the class could sense it; could sense something momentous was about to happen. Many of them knew of my secret plan to dare do the same act _again_. The teacher even knew it. The air was so thick with tension and anxiety and expectation and foreshadowing and teenage hormones you could choke to death on it. My smirk was wonderful, even behind _hip_ teenager braces. I paused at the end for dramatic effect, said my last lines, and subsequently finished my soliloquoy. Drama ensues. “ **Blackeyes** , let me see your hands. Again.” “Oh, okay. Sure. Whatever.” I show her my hands - covered in ink - and she gives one look at them and proclaims to the Land and God above What An Idiot I Am. “Hahaha snort snort (Yes, I said “snortsnort”). Joke’s on _YOU_. Look at my hands one more time!” She does. And Lo and Behold upon my hands were written 500 times a simple proverb: **I am a fish.** It was like freakin’ poetry, man. Words cannot describe it. We all had a good laugh about it later, even Mrs. Teacherlan. Because in the end she had the last laugh. I nightmarishly bombed the poem the second time. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![nineiron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e56c9b/32.png) [@nineiron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nineiron)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2003, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/36 "2003-01-16T15:33:25Z")
Wow, vandalism and theft sure are funny. ---
**Author:** ![Protesilaus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Protesilaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Protesilaus)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2003, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/37 "2003-01-16T16:19:47Z")
Someone at Villanova [broadcast porn](http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/local/3235978.htm) over the campus TV system. The article doesn’t have my favorite part of the story, though, which is mentioned in another news story by Paul Kurtz: > [@](#): > > The station is run by the student government, but Student Government Association president Maureen Holland says it wasn’t sanctioned: “It was definitely not a student government movie.” ---
**Author:** ![Candlemas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a8b319/32.png) [@Candlemas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Candlemas)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2003, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/38 "2003-01-16T17:36:13Z")
This is the first time I’ve ever admitted to being a part of this. My high school was a big rectangle with a pastoral courtyard in the middle of it complete with a pond. It had long been off-limits to students. Toward the end of our senior year, me and a few of my buddies got these blow-up dolls and dressed one as a man wearing an ascot and the other in a sexy dress. We then pasted huge pictures of the faces of our male principal and our male class dean onto the heads of the dolls. The pictures of their faces were ridiculously large and in retrospect made the figures look a little like bobbleheads. We then arranged the dolls in a loving embrace and put them in an inflatable raft. We snuck into the courtyard very early one morning and floated the lovers off onto the pond. We were kind of worried that it wouldn’t look as good as we were hoping but it looked absolutely brilliant, even better than we imagined. You could make out the faces really well even from the 3rd floor and somehow the raft just stayed floating in the middle of the pond. It was THE talk of the school. Before the end of 1st period the building service guys had to come out with those long poles they used to change lightbulbs in the gym to fish the raft ashore. The best was that all their poking at the raft rearranged the dolls so that one ended up lying right on top of the other. People later told me that their teachers stopped class so that everyone could watch the raft being retrieved and that everyone was just dying laughing. It was one of my proudest moments and denying that I had anything to do with it was just as much fun as doing it. Everyone suspected this one crazy guy and it was really funny because he didn’t deny it and sort of let on that he did do it. Spectacular! ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2003, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/39 "2003-01-16T18:43:34Z")
Senior pranks were a big thing at my high school. Most were fairly standard, and versions have already been mentioned in previous posts, including cooking oil in the hallways and splicing a tape player into the PA system. I was fairly proud of my own senior prank. It wasn’t too destructive or dangerous, just annoying. All of the telephones back then were the traditional old telephones with mouthpieces that screwed off. Inside the mouthpiece were transducers that popped out. One could then rescrew the mouthpiece back on. Early one morning (~5:00 am) a friend and I got into the main administration offices and removed every mouthpiece we could find. We then put them all in a bag and stashed the bag in a filing cabinet. Two hours later, parents started calling in for kid’s absences… _Ring, ring_ “Hello, [deleted] High School Admission Office.” (Person calling hears nothing.) “Hello?” “Hello?” [click] Hilarity ensued. 😃 We eventually called the school from a pay phone and told them where to find the missing parts. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2003, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613/40 "2003-01-16T19:04:15Z")
The best prank I’ve ever heard of happened at my alma mater, Rice University, during my sophomore year: The full story may be found here (near the bottom): [http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~opa/ur/pranks.html](http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~opa/ur/pranks.html) Here is an excerpt: > [@](#): > > In 1988, a group of students pulled off the biggest prank at Rice. They rotated the 2,000 pound statue of William Marsh Rice 180 degrees, making Willy face Fondren Library for the first time in 58 years… > > …Using plans of the statue taken from Fondren Library, they simulated the transfer load through a computer model. They built two 24-foot A-frames, which they painted black to blend with the night, and put a beam on top that supported a three ton hoist in the middle and two one ton hoists on the sides… > > …Lookouts and decoys positioned themselves around the Quad and communicated to each other through walkie-talkies using code names from the X-Men comic book series. The light on Anderson Hall had been turned off every night for the two previous weeks. Each morning the pranksters reconnected the light so that physical plant people would not replace it. > > In the early morning hours of Tuesday, April 12, 1988, before the sun came up, Willy sat facing the library. Only one student was caught, Patrick Dyson '88, and was made to pay the cost of turning the statue to its rightful position. > > Students rallied behind Dyson and sold T -shirts that read, "Where There’s A Willy, There’s a Way. " More than enough money was collected to pay the cost of restoring Willy to his familiar perspective. > > What took the pranksters one hour and cost $400 to do took professional movers three hours and a rumored $1,500-$2,000 to remedy. The students were blamed for breaking a guide pin underneath the statue, but they claim the professional movers did that. > > Reports of the prank quickly spread across the country with the help of the media. > “People are going to have a hard time beating this one,” comments a contented Smith. Here’s my personal involvement with the prank: That Tuesday morning, I walked within 10 feet of Willy’s statue as I trudged to CENG 302 (Chemical Engineering Separations), taught by Dr. Derek Dyson. I noticed the people milling about, but was half-asleep and never looked up. When I got to class, however, Dr. Dyson wasn’t discussing separations. He was excitedly drawing plans of A-frames that had been apparently been built by his son! Class ended with a field trip back to Willy’s statue. 🙂 I later bought a T-shirt to help Patrick pay the fine. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-senior-pranks/146613.md?page=3)