Senior Prank:

“I remember my brother being involved in a Senior Prank when he was about to graduate.  He and his friends were able to get three pigs – don’t know how they got them, he would never tell me – and then they spray painted the numbers 1,2, and 4 on the pigs.  What they did was let the pigs loose on campus and the next day the principal and staff were gathering the pigs, but were searching for a pig with the number 3 on it.  That was the whole point of spray-painting numbers 1 through 4 leaving out 3.  There was a huge meeting with the principal and the entire grade, but my brother never got in trouble”.

Stephanie is four years younger than her older brother Steven, so she was not at school when the prank took place.  When I asked her if she knew why her brother took part in the prank she said, “It was just a tradition that senior guys did at my high school.  A year later the seniors stuck hundreds of plastic forks all over the lawn where you enter school.  The year after, the senior guys stacked all of the lunch tables in the middle of campus.  After that year, security on campus tightened up over the last few weeks of school to prevent any pranks from happening”.  I asked Stephanie if girls were ever involved in the pranks and she claimed, “Girls never get involved, I don’t know why.  I guess it’s a guy thing”. Stephanie said that students always enjoyed the senior pranks so much that underclassmen would “look forward to seeing what was in store each year.”

I did further research about this prank because I myself have heard of it before from other students.  With a simple search on Google, hundreds of pages show up with this prank, most commonly called “The Pig Prank”.  The senior prank represents the liminal period for high school seniors.  These students are in a period of time between the last few weeks of high school and graduation, and the senior prank is a practical joke, which is an apparent trait of liminal periods.  The common ideology behind these pranks is that since the “pranksters” can’t get in trouble since they are in this liminal period.  It is interesting that Stephanie says that no girls partake in this high school ritual.  I have never heard any senior prank involve girls myself, which might relate to the origins of senior pranks, which potentially began with males.