“Come in building services, come in building services… Is there Vaseline on the door knobs again?”

The school year is coming to its end, which is the moment seniors have been desperately waiting for. This is their chance to get back at the school for all those cruel exams and unnecessary long essays.  

For the class of 2016, it will be a decision they will forever remember and be remembered by. Whether they win with dignity or win with guilt is a choice they’ll have to risk as they strive to top their predecessors of Watkins Mill.

“Seniors participate in pranks because it’s one of those rituals that people go through, like a rite of passage,” TV production teacher Jamaly Allen said. “And because their predecessors have done it before them, they want to out do them by their creativity, imagination, and stakes before them.”

Previous classes have definitely left their mark here at WMHS, but every senior plans to leave a legacy. There is a few fan favorites among the staff here at WMHS.  Social studies resource teacher Adam Schwartz said that his favorite WMHS prank was when “students got here to school really early and had a barbecue/party in the staff parking lot.”

“Some pranks I’ve heard about are, one year when students broke into [former theater teacher Leyanne] Freeman’s room and they piled all their desks up and made a mound, in reference to Lord of the Flies,” Allen added.

“A prank that happened before I got here is that students slowly, throughout the school year, took all of the chalkboard erasers until gradually there wasn’t any more in any of the classrooms,” social studies teacher Sandy Young said.

Before he was stopping pranks, security guard Steve Smith was pulling them himself. He graduated in 1981 and had seen a movie where “they ran up the flagpole with women’s underwear and undergarments.” Smith and his friends decided to imitate this prank, but “We didn’t realize building service workers came in about two hours before school starts. And so we came in all happy and I was like ‘yo, where’s our stuff?” Smith said.  “Of course, they saw it and they brought it down before school started.”

But not all pranks are harmless fun. Science teacher Lydia Leecost said that one of the worst senior pranks she’s seen at Watkins Mill was “when students painted the front of the school… the day that the [International Baccalaureate] people came to the school. It was not good at all because there was spray paint all over the front of the school.”

“I’m always disappointed when seniors choose vandalism as a prank,” social studies teacher Michelle Pettit said. “One year, the students took all of the sodas in the history office and put them in the freezer and they exploded all over the freezer. Things like that are not creative in any way, they just create more work for building services.”

“Do something that is funny,” science teacher Matt Johnson said. “You guys get a kick out of it and the students and staff can get a kick out of it too, while not being too damaging, harmful, or vulgar.”  While vandalism can seem funny at the time, it often has serious consequences for seniors beyond cleaning the mess–seniors have been not allowed to walk at graduation for pranks that went wrong in the past.

“[The] message I have for the seniors is to engage in life, engage in the moment; be present in everything you do,” Johnson added.  “You have to just set goals and work on that right then in the moment, and I hope the success will come.” 

“If the seniors are planning a prank, and I am sure they are, I would like to be in on knowing what going to happen, because I don’t want to create work for other people,” principal Carol Goddard said.

But, Goddard is not opposed to pranks, which leaves a lot of room for a great one this year.  “As long as [you] don’t hurt anyone, as long as [you] don’t make too big of a mess for building services and [you] think outside the box [I am fine with whatever prank the seniors do],” Goddard added.