The main one that comes to mind is when the new drama teacher (age 25) was found having sex with one of my graduating class (age 18-19).
There was also a big deal about the band director getting fired that year, with half the band quitting in protest (even though most had no problem with his replacement who had taught them in junior high). However, I didn’t learn any details, and was one who stuck it out.
There’s the kid who made a bomb threat because some football players kept bullying him. There were the girls who got drunk on a choir trip and got expelled, which was unexpected as their parents are rich and contributed a lot to the PTA.
Other than that, there are rumors about female teachers being flirty with the male athletes and various stories about people getting drunk in the junior high parking lot. And a few teen pregnancies, one of which involved a college student father.
In my junior year there was a suicide by one of the popular “rock band” boys. Rumor was it was autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong.
Something more shocking than scandalous also happened my junior year. Back then the local police had a cadet ride along program. One of my friends was sitting in the passenger seat of a patrol car while her officer ran into the station. Some nutjob came walking up the railroad tracks and shot and killed her. He thought she was a real cop and he was pissed at the police. They found him later that night dead by suicide.
I’ve heard a lot of woman/peanutbutter/dog ULs, , but this is the first I’ve heard of with guys. But I think the ladies could be fairly confident that the dog would limit itself to just licking.
I grew up in Ottawa, and right across the river is Hull, QC. Ontario had at the time a legal drinking age of 19 and Quebec’s was 18 (no idea if that’s changed as I’m both in my 40s and a teetotaler so I haven’t followed up). Hull also had a lot of bars that were pretty lax in checking IDs (“Does one of your legs touch the ground? Welcome in.”) and it was not at all any kind of secret that there was an exodus of high schoolers across the bridges every weekend. Seriously, I knew a lot of 14 year olds with alcohol issues.
My HS also used to hold school dances off site at rented halls or hotels, which would invariably get trashed, as chaperoning was lax and kids would smuggle in the hooch. The winter festival dance in my Grade 10 year went down in school history for the number of ambulances called when a hotel ballroom was decimated by hundreds of drunk teenagers. One guy fell through a plate glass window, others managed to pull down chandeliers while slam dancing piggybacked. Literal blood on the dance floor. That was the final straw, but I’m still baffled at how long this went on for before the administration stepped in.
There was some other stuff during my years there: rumours of a teacher picking up students (in Hull, both parties being drunk), the time the school newspaper published an article by a student espousing holocaust denial (the school treated it as a “teachable moment” and brought in concentration camp survivors for an assembly), pretty typical stuff, I imagine.
There was a guy in my high school class who was, shall we say, “slow.” He was older and had obviously been “held back.” He was this big dumb guy, and not a friendly sort either. Somewhere along the line he was expelled for, believe it or not, taking a dump in the backstage area of the auditorium. I don’t know what the story was, but there were others involved and he wasn’t the only one expelled. It was really hushed-up and few people heard about it. That was the last we heard of him until…
Several years later, in 1975, he was arrested by the Park Police and questioned by the Secret Service for lurking outside the White House, armed with a loaded handgun. It was determined he posed no serious threat to then-President Ford. He was charged with a misdemeanor of some kind and released. You can still find the story in the New York Times archives by doing a Google search.
Elementary school: A gym teacher ( failed at making the NFL cut for the Eagles ) was relentless in his bullying and physical abuse.
I witnessed him call an African-American girl a " black bitch “. Nobody else saw or heard this…
I said something to him a few days later about , " I heard what you said to xxx”, and he looked around fast then shoved me against the wall and pounded his fingertip into my chest, whispering to me that nobody would ever hear about it.
The next school year he grabbed a boy by his arm and yanked him so hard that he broke it. In gym class. 20 kids shocked and silent.
Kid went to the E.R. Parents were told he fell running in gym class.
Net result? Teacher was transferred to the Jr. High.
As recently mentioned in another thread, the H.S. drama teacher sexually abused boys. He groomed them, gave them parts in the plays and musicals. And abused them.
Nobody knows.
When I was in the 8th grade a kid was caught dealing heroin out of his locker. Died of suicide in H.S. a few years later.
Then, there was Glenn. Glenn’s parents were both locally famous doctors. His older siblings were respected doctors. He abused drugs and alcohol and in H.S. went unconscious while at a party. Woke up when the cops arrived. They took him to the police station. Put him in a cell alone.
Where he hung himself with his shoelaces. That one caused a bit of a fuss but hey, one didn’t shine the light too brightly in the 1970s.
In my case, I was involved in the scandal in question.
As a student, I was the target of rather hard bullying, and when I was 13, other students in my class hanged me by the neck with the rope from the window blinds. Fortunately they apparently realized just in time what they were doing and took me down. I had a purple mark in my neck for the following couple of weeks.
Things became rather hot afterwards. My father was a doctor and after his rage subsided he made sure to document absolutely everything, up to and consulting with a forensic doctor friend of his as to what had happened to me, and have him draw an official report on it.
The two “leaders” of the group who hanged me were expelled, my father entertained the thought of starting some legal action against my high school (didn’t do it in the end), there were heartfelt apologies of my teachers to my father and myself, there were school-wide student assemblies with the teachers giving speeches on the inappropriateness of hanging your classmates, and the whole thing ended up become part of the lore of that high school. I finished my studies there, mostly because of stubborness: I was not going to allow anybody to chase me away from somewhere.
I managed to overcome the whole thing, and leave it in my past. Time passed, and one day I heard from one acquaintance that one of my tormentors from that day had fallen in with bad companies, ended up becoming a heroin addict, and had recently died of an overdose.
I didn’t feel elation or a sensation of “good riddance” at the time; it is not a nice way to go and it is never nice that somebody dies. I also did not feel particularly bad about it. A small pang of pity that somebody had managed to throw their life away, but little more.
Hmmm. I tried my best to be wallpaper in high school, so if anything really scandalous happened, it would have to be way out there for me to know. : ) I did go to Berkeley High School in the late 80’s and we were a regular stop for the Grateful Dead each year. (City theater on campus). I do remember our school hosting Odetta the folk singer for an all school assembly one year and the student body got in trouble because somebody threw an orange at her while she was performing.(IIRC, whoever it was missed.
We also were allowed off campus for lunchtime, and school grounds are really close to the downtown area. One day, a woman decided to jump off a bank building, and I’m kind of glad I missed it.
Heh, one of my classmates married the band teacher, And another classmate that I was friends with married the boys’ vice-principal…who had to wait for a divorce first. Both dudes were seriously repulsive to me.
Oh, and a friend in junior high got pregnant at 13. Both sets of parents forced them to marry. She returned to high school in her senior year, became a cheerleader and one of the homecoming princesses. At our 20 year reunion, I was somewhat surprised that they’d stay married, both went to college, got good jobs, and had a couple more kids once their jobs were stable.
In seventh grade, a kid in my class snuck a bottle of booze in during lunch and spent the afternoon taking sips from it every time the teachers turned their backs. By the end of the day he was completely drunk.
One of the students, who nobody (except her) knew was pregnant, gave birth in one of the bathrooms. I think a history teacher delivered the baby. It made the national news. That baby is in his 30s now.
