The senior pranks are bland. I’ll say it. At the end of the year, our oldest students are finally granted a chance to stick it to the man, except they don’t, because the man has to approve the prank.
The senior prank of the Class of 2024 amounted to a couple of tents on the lawn and a slow trudge out once the school day started. The Class of 2025 was a little better, with a tropical party smack dab in the middle of the hallway. But to me, the pranks can feel sanitized. Originally, I thought that the pranks were only shocking if the administration was unaware. I believed that thanks to a policy of prior prank review, nothing is ever a true surprise.
Of course, I’m no fool, and I knew the potential repercussions of letting an entire grade of students with pent-up aggression loose on the grounds. Walking down the elementary school garden stairs will give you a lovely view of the “2016” spray-painted on the school wall. My original opinion was that a prank is far more memorable when it has a certain level of intrigue and spontaneity. The underclassmen shouldn’t be the only ones unaware of what comes next.
Worry not, however, as I’m not here to produce what I thought was a solutionless problem. Having no restrictions clearly has the potential to breed chaos, but the modern system leads to fewer creative ideas within the student body. And thus, I proposed a middle ground: A set of written regulations could be the solution. A formal write-up of prank etiquette–for example, ensuring no damage would be done to the school’s property or limiting the amount of mess the prank could create. The administration would be able to limit the pranks themselves without a direct view of each prank. The senior class would also be required to provide a specified date, so the prank wouldn’t manifest on some random Tuesday in the middle of June. In this, everyone wins. The administration can still mediate the prank to a certain extent, and the students are granted greater creative liberty and, of course, the element of surprise.
To dive further into the administration’s views, I asked High School Principal Julia Sniffen about her perspective on the issue. When asked how long the tradition had existed at Haldane, she stated: “Since I’ve been at Haldane, there’ve been pranks—I don’t remember there not being a prank of some sort since I started, so that’s 1997.” She has been regulating the pranks for 11 years. When asked if the prior principal, Peter Carucci, was also involved in the approval process, she confirmed, adding that his predecessor, Brian Alm, had as well. Sniffen went on to debunk a previous belief I had: that the 2016 spray-painted haphazardly on the middle school wall was a result of some prank gone horribly wrong. Actually, the 2016 was not part of a senior prank, Sniffen said, but there was an earlier spray-painting incident that was. Of that earlier prank, Sniffen said, “The front of the high school building, if you get the sunlight just right, there is a 2006 spray painted on this building…which is the year in which it all changed.” That was the year that the policy of administrative oversight was initiated, she noted.
So I realized that a lack of oversight caused the oversight in the first place. A real chicken or the egg scenario. Sniffen went on to discuss other historically infamous pranks that occurred before her tenure as a mediator: “We did have a year where they did over 20,000 dollars worth of damage, and we had to have a two hour delay, and there were a handful of kids that I believe shouldn’t have walked at graduation, ultimately they were allowed to, but the damage they did to the school, I don’t think they should’ve been able to walk.”
Sniffin continued by bringing up another major flaw in an unmediated prank—what happens when an underclassman is the one who does serious damage? “Unfortunately, it may not even be a senior, so all of a sudden it’s the seniors’ last night, and then let’s say a sophomore decides to step out of line, and the senior class gets blamed for it.” DeHedlundspite what administrative oversight could mean for a prank, Sniffin personally believes that because of that oversight, she is far more amicable when the prank rolls around. She noted, “For me, I’m here when it’s discussed what’s going to happen, and I like to believe there are a lot of things that are said yes to that would not be appropriate during the normal school year, i.e., slip and slides down the front of the high school.” The greatest issue Sniffin had with my suggested solution of a rulebook instead of direct mediation had to do with her personal responsibility. She said, “If you are giving permission, you have to recognize that you take ownership if something went wrong.”
Sadly, the glory days of unrestricted pranks seem to be over, but perhaps I had looked at them through rose-tinted lenses. Despite how spontaneous and hilarious a prank may seem at the time, it can have lasting consequences; take the infamous 2006 incident as an example. With all of this in mind, maybe it’s not the administration’s tyranny that limits the pranks, but the creativity of the senior class. We hold a rare opportunity with our prank, the ability to make use of any location in the high school, with direct assistance and mediation from our principal. Instead of being an opponent, at the end of the day, our principal is an ally to our good-natured fun. With all that said, good luck, Class of ‘26!
