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Questions raised over the future of high school pranks

It's senior prank season, and this was the plan for the last day of classes last Monday at Hendrick Hudson High School, not far from the Indian Point nuclear plant in Westchester County, north of New York City:

Seniors went to three US$1 stores and bought about 150 alarm clocks in the shape of houses or butterflies, which would be scattered throughout the school.

They would be wrapped in duct tape, so teachers could not shut them off by removing their batteries, and set for 9:15am. And when they went off, the seniors would rise and march triumphantly outside to acknowledge that the fat lady -- or at least her alarm clock -- had sung. They had made it through high school.

Now, with 19 students facing felony charges for placing false bombs, it's leaving everyone mulling over the questions of what's stupid fun and what's just stupid.

The students broke into the school the previous night to deposit the clocks, using a key that officials knew had been missing for a year. When the police responded to an alarm and found the clocks wrapped in duct tape, state troopers and bomb-sniffing dogs descended on the school, worried that the devices might be explosives.

The search quickly turned out negative, and seniors said no one ever contemplated that the clocks might be seen as bombs.

"It never crossed anyone's mind that this could be taken that way," said Alex Kane, a senior who said he contributed US$1 to the clock fund.

But the damage was done. Officials filed felony charges of placing a false bomb against the 19 students identified as being in the school during the break-in.

By the end of last week, officials announced that the 19 charged could get their diplomas but could not attend graduation ceremonies and that those students who helped finance the operation -- perhaps a quarter of the class of more than 200 -- could attend graduation only if they did community service first.

Officials said that the students clearly violated school procedures by breaking into the school, and that what might have seemed a harmless prank 10 years ago isn't funny now.

But most students said the penalties were far too severe for what they described as basically a misunderstanding.

"You say it out loud: What did they do? Well, they put clocks in the school," said Grace Bleiweis, another sophomore.
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