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Lots of students jailed over silly string and hot dogs

Travis

Misanthrope of the Mountains
Travis
Joined
Mar 31, 2007
Messages
24,133
In the great spirit of the internet I choose to forgo waiting for more information, declare the police corrupt, the school evil, the students Hitler and myself an anointed arbiter of reason.

http://www.nj.com/bergen/index.ssf/...ts_arrested_in_teaneck_high_school_prank.html

Officers discovered the vandalism after they responded to a burglary alarm at the school around 2 a.m., Teaneck police Acting Chief Robert Carney said at a news conference. When police arrived, several students ran from the building, while others hid inside.

In the end, 63 high school seniors were arrested, including 24 adults, Carney said. The 39 juveniles were released to their parents.

All of them were charged with burglary and criminal mischief, Carney said.

Because of the number of students, police from more than 15 agencies assisted Teaneck officers at the school, Carney said. A K-9 team from the Bergen County Police Department's bomb squad also swept the building before classes.
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Whew. Thank goodness none of the kids were Aqua Team fans.
 
And smeared vaseline around. The cost of cleaning all that up should be born by the students - or better yet, make them do it. While the idea of pulling a "prank" seems hilarious as the time, most of the kids doing them don't factor in the cost of clean up after the supposedly "harmless prank".
 
Right. Harmless prank is blowing up 1000 balloons and filling the principal's office with them. This was worthy of misdemeanor charges. A wise judge would follow The Mutha's suggestion -- since the clean up had to be completed before school began there is no chance for the students to actually right the wrong. I'd sentence each student to community service performed for the school district at a rate double the individual man hours of the actual clean up and suspend adjudication on the charge (kids won't have the record of conviction) contingent on a satisfactory report of completion. Any of the kids caught urinating (which is rank vandalism and not a simple prank) would probably not enjoy the same leniency -- though there's really not enough information provided to give anything but a first impression on the second point.

We had the same tradition at my high school, but there was an unofficial policy that the petty vandalism had to be kind of self-contained and non-marking. Dry toilet paper, balloons, poster board messages, etc... Every senior member of a school organization was responsible for the clean-up which caused a great deal of self-moderation by the people taking part in the prank.
 
Apropos of something else entirely, I suggest the punishment for the urination should be appropriate, perhaps involving topically applied wasabi or pepper.
Chilies for repeat offenders.
 
A'isha said:
You left out the part where they also urinated on the floors.
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That would require more research which I explicitly swore off to make sure there was more room for outrage.
 
So long as all the rich kids get off, I don't see the problem. It's about time some of these poor kids got to work on their real permanent record.
 
Obviously, the problem here is that this school was not yet under the protection of the NRA's armed vigilantes.
 
At the high school where I taught about 20 years ago, I arrived on the last day of classes to find the entire main entrance to the school walled off by concrete blocks about 8 feet high. The students were admitted by other doorways and classes started. At exactly 9 AM all the senior students, without a word being said, got up from class (including my calculus class) and walked out. I followed them. When we got outside the one student missing from my class drove up in a flat bed truck. Twenty minutes later the wall was down, the bricks on the truck and the students back in class. All in all, a wonderful well executed prank.
 
A'isha said:
You left out the part where they also urinated on the floors.
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That seems to be disputed.

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I would imagine a lot of the kids were just intending it to be a harmless prank (balloons and silly string and whatnot) and a few of them took it too far. Unfortunately, they may not be able to determine who did what.
 
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I would say "I was trying to play a prank" is not a sufficient defense for breaking and entering.
 
The Mutha said:
And smeared vaseline around. The cost of cleaning all that up should be born by the students - or better yet, make them do it. While the idea of pulling a "prank" seems hilarious as the time, most of the kids doing them don't factor in the cost of clean up after the supposedly "harmless prank".
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Sure, have them clean it up, but that is not punishment. Since they had no business doing it in the first place, restoring the school back to it's original state is a minimum. It's like restitution for a thief. That's not a penalty, since they had no right to the money in the first place. Giving back money that isn't yours isn't a punishment.
 
JRT said:
At the high school where I taught about 20 years ago, I arrived on the last day of classes to find the entire main entrance to the school walled off by concrete blocks about 8 feet high. The students were admitted by other doorways and classes started. At exactly 9 AM all the senior students, without a word being said, got up from class (including my calculus class) and walked out. I followed them. When we got outside the one student missing from my class drove up in a flat bed truck. Twenty minutes later the wall was down, the bricks on the truck and the students back in class. All in all, a wonderful well executed prank.
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That's pretty good. Our prank was completely cleaned up by the time we arrived at school. Quite a let down for us pranksters.
 
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