Tag Archives: high school tradition

Don’t Step on the “B”

Informant KS is a 19 year-old USC freshman from San Jose, California.

Text:

It is a custom for students of a certain private, Catholic high school to avoid stepping on the logo of the school — a circular emblem with a “B” in the center which is printed on the ground — or risk being beat up by seniors.

Context:

KS attended a private, Catholic high school which was founded over 150 years ago.

KS: “I actually found out about this tradition when I was very young, maybe ten years old. I attended summer camps at the school, and ‘Don’t step on the ‘B” is one of the first things you learn about if you ever come to campus. The basic idea behind it is there’s a logo in the center of campus that has a ‘B.’ It’s a circular logo. And the rumor was that if you stepped on the ‘B’ and there were seniors nearby, they had full license to beat you up, since you disrespected the logo of the school. I’m not exactly sure if people do beat other people up over stepping on the ‘B’ given that I’ve never actually seen it happen. I’ve never seen a student step on the ‘B’ before, I’ve only seen an unsuspecting parent do it before, and nobody really had a reaction in that circumstance. I would say this custom is part of one of the many traditions that we have at the school that gives it a bit of character. I guess it ties into a greater respect for the logo and the institution.”

Analysis:

As an institution dating back over 150 years, the private high school which KS attended has accumulated its own folklore in the form of customs such as avoiding the “B.” Since its founding, the folklore developed among students and the growing alumni network served to develop a common culture and camaraderie surrounding those with the experience of attending the high school, which resulted in KS learning about the custom from a young age. While serving as one shared custom that builds camaraderie, the act of avoiding the “B” also further develops a sense of respect and reverence for an old institution. Older definitions of folklore — such as those utilized by German folklorists Johann Gottfried von Herder and the Brothers Grimm — tend to argue that folklore is a practice shared by the common folk and independent of the elite class, yet this custom operates on both levels — as a shared practice among students, and as a means of maintaining the legitimacy of an old institution.

Bunnyman

Content: 

K: So I grew up in Northern Virginia. Fairfax County, right? Um, I have, um, so the story is about, um, it’s based off of a series of murders that happened, uh, sometime in the mid to late 1900s. And the suspect apparently, uh, was seen to be wearing a bunnyman costume when they happened. And it’s like, one of the places that it went down was happened to be down the street from one of my childhood friends. Like in the, he lives in this wooded neighborhood, in the outskirts of Fairfax. And so, you know, the like thing to do as a kid is like, it’s, there’s a tunnel that goes from like the end of the street goes to this, like one lane tunnel. And then, um, on the other side is like a park maybe, but so the dare is to like, get your, you and your friends to get in the car, drive down the road, into the tunnel and then like, turn the car off and then wait for like a couple minutes and then see if he appears. And then, you know, so we did it one time. I’m still alive. <laugh> but yeah, that’s that’s the bunnyman is like the, um, like they never caught him. So he like still roams. 

Me: Right. Did you see, did anything happen or were you all just sitting in a car? 

K: No, I scared them though. <laugh> 

Me: Nice.

Background: K is a 22 year old from Fairfax County, Virginia. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California. 

Context: This story was told to me at a hangout among friends. 

Analysis: Although I didn’t find it as much in the stories I collected for this project, I’ve noticed a trend of dares being associated with ghost stories. The fear of the legend motivates people to go out with their friends in search of a terrifying or potentially dangerous experience. Although these experiences seem to be few and far between, that doesn’t stop the tradition from continuing with each new generation. It seems like most of the lore comes from the performance of seeking out the paranormal rather than the spirit himself. 

High School Senior Pranks

Nationality: Armenian American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Glendale, California
Performance Date: April 18, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Armenian, Farsi

Main Piece

My informant explains that her old high school has an age-old rival high school in the same city. She remembers that the graduating seniors of every year would perform a prank on the rival school, and the rival school would do the same. These pranks were usually harmless, but sometimes costly to recover from. She remembers that in her senior year of high school, a few seniors from her school dyed the rival school’s pool purple, which was her school’s colors. The rival school, looking for revenge, threw two queen-sized mattresses in her school’s pool, which absorbed a large amount of water, making it impossible to lift them out of the pool without a crane. She laughed as she recounted these memories to me.

Background

My informant is a college student studying Business. She was school spirited in high school and claims to have always participated in senior activities with her classmates. She explains that nobody she asked could remember how the rivalry between the two high schools started. However, according to my informant, it is not hard to draw conclusions. Both schools were located in the same small suburb of Los Angeles, ranked academically high, and held strong sports teams. She concludes that these factors may have caused, in her own words, this “friendly, but not-so-friendly” rivalry between the two high schools. She explains that in addition to the senior pranks, there would be one school day out of the entire academic year dedicated to pep rallies and parties to encourage the football team to beat the rival school later that day. She explains that these schools were rivals in every way, but her favorite part of the rivalry was the senior pranks.

Context

These senior pranks are performed by high school seniors. Faculty members knew about the pranks and were aware of the plans for the pranks, but never interfered with them unless they saw a safety issue or a health hazard that could possibly result from the pranks. Usually, these pranks were performed later in the year, when most seniors suffered from “senioritis” and would rather organize pranks than do any more schoolwork. 

My Thoughts

I attended the same high school as my informant, and can attest to the large-scale rivalry between these two high schools. The pranks that the seniors performed were generally creative and inventive, but the pranks were not as important as the act of organizing these pranks. Students came together after school to meticulously plan their pranks to perfection. This goes to show that the prank itself was not important. The value of this tradition came from the act of coming together. 

High school seniors are in a liminal period. They are transitioning from their identity as a student to their identity as an adult, whether they enter the workforce or go off to college. Senior pranks are a form of rite of passage. According to French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep, practical jokes and pranks such as senior pranks are performed during these liminal times to ease the tensions and anxieties that come with the transition. Thus, we can conclude that senior pranks were a way to smoothen the transition from student to adult for high school seniors. 

High School Senior Prank

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Iowa
Performance Date: 4/12/2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Me: So at your high school, senior year, some of the kids made a slip and slide?

J: Yeah… so basically, right by the cafeteria there’s this.. ramp? For some reason? And people would just (laughs) set up the slip and slide there and they got– I think they got like water, or maybe it was– no, I think it was water. And they just created this slip and slide and they all just went down it. And a lot of people recorded it on their snapchats but I did not partake, because I was a good student. And also, I did not run in those crowds, so I wouldn’t do something like that (laughs) so uh… I didn’t participate but I did see it happen. I think another thing people did was… I heard stories about people, like, setting like, baby chicks into the hallways (laughs) and letting them roam through the school, but I’m not even sure if that’s true. But I feel like I heard about that. 

Me: So the slip and slide thing, it wasn’t like a slip and slide that you could buy? People just set up water and went down the ramp?

J: No, I think they set up a tarp, or some sort of rubber or something– but then they ran– I don’t know if it was water or… it was some sort of liquid or some sort of substance and then they all like ran through– they all dived down the ramp (laughing). It was like all the popular kids at my school, like all the jocks and whatnot. 

Background:

My informant is a senior at USC as of the year 2021 and is from the same state as me (Iowa) in a city not too far from my hometown in the capital. He attended a public high school in a suburban neighborhood, where he witnessed this prank during his senior year. He expresses that he did not participate in the prank, as a certain “crowd” of students were the ones who initiated and participated in it. He explains that it was started by the “popular” kids at his school, who were mostly the student-athletes and other kids who were infamous throughout the school for pulling such pranks. He tells me that he recalls administrators bolting past him in the hallways, which he now realizes was in response to this prank. It is now a funny memory for him, though he was never one to participate in it.

Context:

This is a transcript of our conversation over zoom. My informant has been a mentor for me throughout the year, and this story came up during one of our bi-weekly meetings where we catch up with each other on life and school.

Thoughts:

I like this story because it is something that I never got to experience. Unfortunately, my senior year of high school was cut short due to the pandemic, so the opportunity for a senior prank was slim. However, it’s nice to hear others’ stories because these pranks are almost always humorous and can get outrageous. I also feel that this senior prank is a good example of the liminal period. Because high school seniors, in their last stretch of high school, are in the process of transitioning from one identity to another, they are caught in a state of being identity-less. They are not quite high school students anymore, but they also have not assumed the identity of a college student, or have started a professional career yet. Being identity-less can bring great freedom, but also feelings of tension and stress. Pranks are thus a vehicle for relieving this stress. Creating a slip and slide in the middle of a hallway in the school is a clear example of a prank that can alleviate the stress of this transition while enjoying the rebellious freedom of finishing high school. Further, I also find the dichotomy of the participants and the observers in this story interesting. Rather than being a prank that all seniors partook in, the prank was mostly controlled by a group of students that are stereotypically thought of as more powerful than other students. This may suggest that the freedom to rebel may not be something that all students feel they possess. Despite this, all of the seniors enjoyed the prank whether they participated in it or observed it. 

Haunted Theaters and Ghost Lights

Nationality: Afro-Latinx
Age: 20
Occupation: FIDM Student Studying Fashion Design, Food Service
Residence: 2715 Portland St Los Angeles CA 90007
Performance Date: 4/13/21
Primary Language: English

My friend shared this story with me and another female friend one night in the kitchen after work. I asked this friend about her haunted house and she later shared that her classmates always left a ‘ghost light’ in the school theater. It was bad luck not to leave a ghost light. This friend also said that she believed her theater may have housed some recent ghosts.

This speaker went to an arts school in Tampa, Florida. She took classes in the drama department and was in school theater productions. Here is her story.

*

“Theaters are traditionally haunted all the time… they’re just traditionally haunted,” the speaker said. “After you’re done striking a set or cleaning up or after you’re done rehearsing. You’re always supposed to leave a ghost light, or the ghost, or else that was bad luck.” I asked whether the light was meant to guide the ghosts, but she said that it existed to appease them/ She said ghosts do not like the dark, and that this was ironic.

One day after practice “a student forgot to put the ghost light on, you know, it’s not anything, not a very big deal. It’s literally like a stick and a light ball. And you roll it out onto theaters, like, but we just forgot about it. And then the next day, like a spotlight fell, and that was really bad.”

The speaker said that there were some specific ghosts she thought haunted the theater. “There were a couple of tragedies that did happen at our theater. And there was actually some of them were actually pretty recent. So I’d like to think there were good spirits rather than bad spirits,” she said. The drama director’s brother had passed away that year, and the speaker said that she would like to think that he came to see the productions at the theater. The speaker also added that a young actress had died of a disease in the past, and that there was a plaque in front of the theater honoring her memory. The speaker said that she would like to think that the actress’ ghost visited the theater as well.

When I asked what this meant to the speaker, she said that the young actress had “put so much of her craft into theater.” I suspect that knowing that deceased guests might visit the theater is comforting to the speaker, and that these two particular ghosts help future productions.

*

The speaker has shared other ghost stories and believes that these stories are real, so it makes sense that she would believe these ghosts could be real as well. She began telling this story discussing ghost lights and bad luck, but the story ended on a note of good luck. I was taught to act as if a god was always watching, and I know many people feel comforted to know that someone else is guiding them during stressful parts of their life. It might be comforting to know that ghosts are watching over stage productions as well, since the ‘good’ ghosts the speaker mentioned had theater or theater-adjacent backgrounds.

I did not know that movie theaters and stages are supposed to be haunted or that actors would leave a ghost light. My school had a small theater that we used for small class meetings when the drama department was not at practice. I can’t remember a specific light that was left on the stage, but the room was never completely dark. This was likely for security reasons.

The haunted theater trope may be due to the fact that theaters serve as a sort of liminal space when not in use. Theaters are such specific buildings, and sticking around after the show is not an expected reaction. Only janitors and stage crew might remain after a show is over.

Additionally, members who know about the ghost light are ‘real’ members of the theater community. They understand the traditions of other actors and stage crew, and they are part of an in-group.

This story also draws upon similar ideas as the article ‘Ghostly Possession of Real Estate: The Dead in Contemporary Estonian Folklore’ by Ulo Valk. Actors and other community members who believe in ghosts come to terms with tragedy by carrying out traditions in the hope that loved ones continue to exist in the ‘haunted theater.’ The ghost does not necessarily need to be buried near the theater, rather the theater belongs to them because their devotion to acting tied these ghosts to this particular spot.

For another ghost legend by the same speaker, see ” Haunted House in Indiana- The Funny Man and the Woman with the Red Eyes: Sleep Paralysis and Two Traveling Ghosts” in the USC digital Folklore Archive.