Senior Prank History

East Angels Alumni Network

Last April, the graduating seniors posted outside on East High School's “E”, cans of silly-string in hand, waiting patiently for the unsuspecting underclassman and Juniors to go to lunch. This simple prank was washed away by the end of lunch unlike the “mess of dummies covered in [animal] organ meats”, courtesy of the Class of 1984. 

The famous senior prank in 1984 featured a fake plane crash, with the propellers, wings, and fuselage of a small plane broken into pieces, and two fake bodies with “organ meats” spilling out, all over the esplanade. Last year's prank played it on the safer side, but along with the silly string, seniors also brought in their pets. One senior, Ali Garcia, brought in her pet gerbil, another, Juliet Canon brought in her pet duck. 

The “senior prank” has been around for decades and students have gotten as creative as staging a plane crash to simply “sleeping” in the foyer. These pranks are a fairly controversial tradition because of the thin line that mischievous seniors walk between an impractical joke, and an expensive disaster.

The “slumber party” prank occurred in the spring of 2024 during graduate Kai Luna’s senior year. Kai reminisces on his class's prank, explaining different ideas that they had come up with. One idea was to plant red and white flowers at South High School, East's rival school, but they were unable to execute this plan which disappointed Kai, “We were just too lazy”, he explains. Similarly to Kai, many seniors find a lack of collaboration on a senior prank to be one of their bigger regrets. In 1981, the vice president of the senior class, Katie Hite expressed her remorse in an interview with The Spotlight where she said, “I wish our class would have gotten together to plan a better senior prank,” and next year's seniors should learn from this mistake and “enjoy” their senior year. 

The 1980’s was a decade of pranks, along with the plane crash, the 80’s also saw for-sale signs on the esplanade, hundreds of library books strewn around the school, synchronized alarm clocks locked in lockers going off in the middle of the day, and more. It is widely debated whether or not these pranks should be continued, because oftentimes they can be very destructive and get people into trouble if they are too presumptuous. In the library prank of 1982, the school faced costly damages and many staff members were not happy about it. 

Ed Calloway, a staff member at East at the time, said, “The schools are short of money anyhow- it's even worse when money that could have been used for books has to be used to repair the damage caused by these pranks.” Staff and administrators take these pranks in all sorts of ways. Some laugh about it and think that it's just silly high schoolers, but others have to deal with the repercussions of thousands stepped on, ripped up, or missing books.

After consuming television shows and movies about the high school experience, lots of kids go into it and are disappointed to find that school spirit is not as perfect as it is in Bring It On. Not every type of person gets invited to the party like in Dazed and Confused, and people actually think you're a weirdo if your whole friend group wears pink every Wednesday (Mean Girls). With grades, social life, and the start of a new future looming in the back of students minds, the senior prank is a last hurrah. It’s questionable if past pranks were too much, or were handled poorly, but the senior prank can be one of the best high school traditions. It’s the last time that high schoolers can silly-string a bunch of random freshmen and bring their pets to school, and have a chance to do something immature and fun as kids before stepping into the real world.

With spring approaching, the crucial part of senior year is coming up. Start brainstorming now so that we don’t flop like the past few years and we can make an epic impact on East High School. Have fun, but, don’t be dumb East Seniors!