The school leaver's prank
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Firstly an explanation. Students: The last day of school. You've now been in school for thirteen of your eighteen years - that's 72 near on 73% of your life. If you expect to live to sixty, then that's going to be near on 20% of your life (not counting university). And it's the last time that all your friends are together - of course some of them you will keep in contact with, but not all. And of course, there's tradition. Something lasting needs to be contributed to the school. And this is the prank. Something funny and witty, something interesting, something memorable.
What better then in later life to look back and remiss with some friends "What about the time they put all the bins in the school on top of the roof?" or "What about when x accidentally set fire to the school hedge and the field beyond when he followed the advice of his geography teacher and set fire to his geography books?" *Things like that. And that's the importance of the prank. The final one, the big one. Life from now on is serious.
Several important rules must always be observed:
The prank should not cost anything to undo. If it does, it would be paid for by whoever did the prank, so its just not worth it. And thought must be made for anyone who has to clean it up (such as the caretaker or the janitor) and indeed, you should clean up the prank your self.
No copying any previous years. This means that the prank must be original. Of course this only counts for an individual school, as otherwise there would be no way each school year could come up with individual plans.
Pranks should be not be offensive, and should have taste.
Research the target and have a well thought out plan in advance. No last minute plan is going to work. All effort and time before will be well rewarded.
Don't tell anyone not involved with it.
Right, a successful prank goes through the following stages:
- Plan
- Research
- Reconnoitring
- Action
- Observers
- Being caught
- Cleaning up
Right, lets go through a case study to explain all these points. A group of ten or so people decided to play a prank on a school (all aged in the age range of 17-18).*
- Plan.
The plan is to paint a side of the mobiles * pink, so when the students come into school in the morning, the first thing they see is: pink mobiles. The mobiles are currently painted green (as this is the 'official' school colour). Details of master plan is to paint it in emulsion so it can be easily washed off when caught - Research.
Caretaker. *Now, this guy is hard working, and the day before leaving time, there was an event lower down the school. The caretaker had to spend time clearing away the tables and resetting the hall for exams for the next day.
The other thing about our school is the security system. I'm sorry, but I don't consider our school to be a pretty secure place (but then again, any large public facility is) - Reccie.
After the caretaker was observed leaving, the leader of the group went for a quick reccie, all seemed clear. Time is now around midnight, and the group made their way into school, scrambled the fence, and made their way over to the mobiles. Its about now, things begin to go wrong. - Action.
Firstly, the group found the prank of the other, less responsible group of sixth formers. Now this is a bad thing - this vandalisation had to be cleaned up quickly, so the group set to work, cleaning the gloss paint of before it dried. And this is their main failure, setting them back by at least an hour. Once this was done, they then moved on and started painting the mobiles in the emulsion (note the difference). - Observers.
Now, this is an important piece. Idealistically there should be no observers but there may be problems with this, and you get seen by someone not in the know. But observation isn't what causes the problems - it's the reaction to the observation.
And this is also a consequence of bad research. An unknown factor crept up (or to be precise, drove) The milkman came at three in the morning. The group scattered (being quite a distance away) and hid - well all but one. This caused the milkman to be concerned. Five minutes later the cry "the feds have arrived" rang out across the site, and the entire thing is abandoned, all parties fleeing and hiding. And this leads us onto the "feds": Sooner or later, the police will get involved. When and how deeply is affected by several variables: not one being the nature of the prank. The first one is the number of people involved. The more people involved, the less the police care. Its something to do with the ratio and that blame can be spread around. - Being Caught
You will be caught. No matter how great the plan, you will be caught. However, when the police arrive at the site of the prank, they looked around and one pointed out to the other one a student "hiding". This guy, true to his every day form, realising that he's been caught gives in, and apparently his words, which should now become immortal are "Can I help you officer?".
Well, that's it really - you would have thought that the prank was done for, but no, the police, with this guy's quick thinking (and indeed talking) quelled the police officers, so that they would not arrest them, but left them in peace to continue the prank. And of course, in the morning, the prank has the effect it wanted.
- Cleaning up
Sure enough, the people owned up to it - or at least the guy who got caught did. And by the end morning registration, there where seven or eight guys out there (strange that, there where girls involved with the painting, but only guys cleaning up) where out there with buckets of water washing it off. And indeed, by the end of the first lesson, it was mostly gone.
A successful prank? Yes. No effort by the staff or extra expense was needed to clean up. Nobody got hurt, everyone found it funny, and everyone had a good time.
But don't think that all plans should work. One idea was to electrify the bike sheds, and stick a mildly offensive notice up, then when the deputy head comes in, he reaches to take it down and an amusing spectacle occurs.
And to students out there: Stick to the guidelines. Don't do anything that you couldn't clean up or get out of. And selling the deputy heads car really really is not worth it. Funny, yes. Worth it, no.
