How to Pull Off a Famous Senior Prank

Ahh… the senior prank. The time-honored tradition of doing something stupid in the last few weeks of your high school career. But a senior prank, no matter how sweet, isn’t worth much if nobody remembers it. So what can you do to make sure that your senior prank is one that will go down in history? Here are a few tips.

First off, make sure that your prank is original. Yes, releasing a few thousand 10 cent PetCo crickets in the school is funny, but nobody’s going to remember such a generic prank. The same goes for releasing 3 pigs numbered 1, 2, and 4. If you’ve already heard of it happening, it’s probably no good.

Next, make sure it’s BIG. Your prank should require dozens, if not hundreds, of people to successfully execute. Not only must it be big in execution, but in noticability. If people can’t spot your prank, they certainly won’t remember it. Big things in high places are good. Little things behind closed doors are bad. Do your parents own a helicopter? Use it to airlift a few cars onto the roof of your school.

Another way to make your prank memorable is by making it extremely inconvenient or annoying for the majority of the student body. You could, for example, go to the district bus lot late at night and slash all the tires, leaving anyone without stuck with no ride to school. If it makes peoples’ lives more difficult, they’ll remember for years.

Inconvenience goes hand in hand with another senior prank bonus: cost! Make your prank expensive! Try to get the clean-up cost into the thousands, at least. The cost of peoples’ time that you waste also counts toward your grand total. The more the school, and the tax payers, have to pay the better. Nothing helps someone’s memory like a good dent to the old wallet!

Legality is another important element in your prank. People always remember things that are spectacularly illegal. Theft and vandalism are the most common senior prank crimes, so bonus points if you can incorporate others. Similarly, complain vocally about the punishment for your prank-related crimes, no matter how fitting. After all, crimes committed in the name of a senior prank don’t really count, right?

The final, and possible most important, factor in your prank memorability is its obscenity. Nothing helps like shock value. Make your prank so graphic and disturbing that its image will haunt people for the rest of their lives.

Lets take a look at a few fairly successful senior pranks. Names of the schools and individuals involved have been left out, to protect the innocent (and guilty).

At a high school in Michigan, students spent a few early morning hours applying caulk and super glue to all of the outer doors. Around the outside, on the handles, in the locks, no part of the door was ignored. As it turns out, caulk and super glue are very hard to remove, leaving the school with thousands of dollars in locks and doors to replace. When the students were caught, fined, and punished, their parents threw such a temper tantrum that it made it into all the local papers, thus immortalizing it in the record of history!
What it has: Size, inconvenience, cost, illegality.
What it lacks: Obscenity

The same high school was home to another successful senior prank just a few years later. Students stole a large, inflatable SpongeBob from the roof of a local Burger King and inflated it on the roof of the school. Officials removed it quickly, but not before the entire student body had run outside to stare.
What it has: Size, cost (to Burger King), illegality.
What it lacks: Inconvenience, obscenity.

Our next case brings about an accidental advantage. Students organized on a large scale to dump dry ice into every toilet in the building, thus filling all the hallways with a wonderful fog. Cool, for sure, but not too memorable. Lucky for the students, the cold of the dry ice cracked the bowls of many of the toilets that it was placed in, costing thousands in damage!
What it has: Size, cost, some obscenity (people remember things involving toilets).
What it lacks: Illegality, inconvenience.

I’d love to see some good comments on this article. Can anyone max out all the factors and post the perfect senior prank?