A Case Of Sticky Fingers
“When I was a sophomore at an all-girls boarding school, someone stole my package from the school post office in a string of package thefts over the course of a week or so. My package was knitting supplies for a class that I needed to finish my final project.
One day, I saw this notoriously weird girl knitting in the hallway. At first, I actually thought it was cool she picked up knitting. But I realized they were the same needles and yarn I had ordered.
I went to her room and knocked on the door. The doors had fogged windows and old school latches without locks and it was typical to tap the latch and lean your head into each other’s rooms. As I looked in, I saw another project with the other yarn I ordered!
I came back later and she was there. I simply said, ‘Hey, look, I know you took my package. I really need it for class so if you give it back, I won’t tell anyone you took it.’ She burst into tears and asked how dare I accuse her and said that some friend sent her those knitting supplies. So I said I’d have to report her and left.
During study hall that night, one of the dorm parents came to my room. She told me I was in trouble for accusing the girl of stealing and that I should be ashamed and apologize. I told her I was sure she was responsible for stealing all the packages. I put together all my order info with photos and told them I saw her with all of it.
The next day, we were called to an emergency all-school assembly. The school dean announced that right then, while everyone was accounted for, they were doing ‘random’ room searches. They searched her room first and found EVERYTHING. I mean every single thing that people were missing for the two years she was there. She was hauled off to a locked room in the health center and sent away. The faculty had to pack her things and try to recover stolen items, but most of it got thrown out. She had a collection of adult toys (all stolen). One of the most remarkable finds was the credit card of another girl’s dad that she’d lifted from his wallet over parents weekend. She even stole my Rueben sandwich from the hall fridge one time (still annoys me).
She had a lot of compulsive disorders, apparently. Her roommate mysteriously left the school over Thanksgiving break and no one ever heard from her again. I’m pretty sure we know why now.”
Hi Officer, Just Going For My Morning Jog!
“A PE teacher was showering and ended up having a seizure. He fell, hit his head, and passed out. Upon waking up disoriented, he began to go on his daily jog around the outside of the school, except he was in his birthday suit. The police were called on the apparent ‘streaker,’ whom they chased down and tackled only to find out that he was having a medical emergency. Almost the entire school saw this…I felt bad for the dude.”
A Modern Day Robin Hood
“There was this IT teacher in my middle school that gathered all teachers for a march to demand a decent wage. He did it, the teacher’s paycheck went doubled and he resigned from the school. He was so controversial during that year.
Two years later, I went to a high school and he was my IT teacher again. And guess what? He did the same thing, managed to raise the wage, and resigned before I graduated.
Then I found out that he is from a wealthy family, so I guess all the things that he did definitely not for him.”
A Bit Of An Overreaction, Don’t You Think?
“We had a girl named Tatianna at our school, this was around 7th grade so that makes it all the more extreme.
Our principal took her phone because she was texting nudes to younger girls, so she reacted by ripping a fire extinguisher from the wall and proceeding to beat the daylight out of our principal with it.
Cops were called, they couldn’t get her under control, and eventually, they had to use a freaking net launcher to get her restrained…
Our principal’s face was beaten beyond recognition and she spent a couple months off while she had surgeries to fix some of it.
It was pretty messed up, but wow it was such an extreme response to getting your phone taken.”
High School Brewer’s Guild
“Last year in high school, some kids started to brew stout in their lockers, but since we didn’t ‘own’ our lockers, the school couldn’t go after the kids that did it. So they made a change that we owned our own lockers and the contents of the lockers for the time we were studying at that school.
This became very interesting when some kids were still brewing in their lockers; it smelled and the school noticed. They broke up the lockers, disposed of what was brewing in there. In turn, the kids doing who were doing it simply called the cops and accused the school of theft.
It was all sorted out without a court, but the school was held responsible to protect the private ownership of what was in our lockers. So brewing became a lot more common and the school couldn’t do anything about it.”
They Finally Crossed The Line
“In high school, I did the morning announcements with two other guys in front of a green screen every Friday on camera—we chose the background. We were given a lot of leniency because this was in the early 2000s when technology was a little more simple. In the AV room, we controlled every TV in the high school of over 1,000 kids.
When Christmas was close, we were told, ‘Don’t do anything Christmas related because not everyone celebrates it.’ So the last announcement before the holidays, the screen comes on, and in the background, there is a sleigh-ride video and the three of us pop up and yell ‘Merry Christmas!’ as loud as we could, dressed in Christmas costumes. Now, the school couldn’t turn us off, only we could. It just so happened that the superintendent was in the building that day, saw the video and freaked out. It turned into this whole ordeal and we were almost suspended for three days.
They stopped letting us do the announcements until there was a petition signed by the school to let us do it again because we were actually pretty funny and most of the gags we pulled were innocent, like eating creamed corn out of the can in less than 10 seconds if enough cans were donated to the food drive. When they let us come back, they said we couldn’t make jokes and we had to have a neutral background. So…we went forward with our plan.
When the announcements turned on for the first time since our near suspension, we had no background – just the green screen. The other guys and I just wore white t-shirts. We read the announcements without as much as winking minus the occasional moan. It would be like: ‘Today for lunch the school is servvv…mooaaaannnn… ugh…umm…pizza! Serving pizzzaaaaa.’ At first, it was minimal but at the end of it, it was basically all you could hear. We read the last announcement, said goodbye and then started acting like the announcements were over and like we didn’t know we were on camera. We stood up, revealing the fact that we were only in our boxer shorts the whole time, and walked off camera. After about 10 seconds, our buddy Scott stood up from under the table, wiped his lips off, took a big swallow and walked off camera.
That time, we were suspended.”
A Disgusting Chain Reaction
“Three upperclassmen drank Ipecac shortly before getting into the lunch line.
Their plan was to time it so that once they got to the actually to the lunch ladies they’d starting violently throwing up all over the food. They were hoping that their vomit would start a chain reaction of people seeing vomit and as a result, vomit themselves. This was just after the Ipecac episode of Family Guy aired, that’s where they got the idea. Their plan sort of succeeded.
I was already at my lunch table when it happened. I heard screaming coming out of the food service area and kids running out. Apparently what had happened was only one of them manage to puke on the food, the other had puked on all of the lunch trays stacked up on a cart.
The third guy took a little longer before he popped, He was on the floor in the food service area, going through severe stomach pain, as the other two were after they were vomiting. My mom (a teacher) told me that he was the one that told the principal what they had done and that he vomited all over the bed in the nurse’s office shortly thereafter.
As for the chain reaction, there were two students that also threw up during the initial cascade of vomit. So….it sort of worked.”
What A Way To End Senior Year
“This was actually within the past month.
We had to take a wellness survey from a local college. It was stuff like, ‘Do you feel safe in school?’ and ‘Do you ever feel suicidal?’ AT THE TIME, we thought the survey was anonymous and only existed for the college students’ Psych finals or whatever.
Well… a few days after we took the survey, a fellow senior sent THIS email to literally the entire school (though addressed to the admins):
‘Good Morning Administration,
Last night, I had an extraordinarily terrifying experience after returning home from a basketball game. My mom, with tears in her eyes, begged me to tell her why I had been cutting myself. Imagine my surprise and horror at this statement as a kid who had been fortunate enough to evade such a dark place in my life. In response, I quickly denied these accusations and revealed my arms and thighs, which were unmarred from any self-inflicted injury.
However, my parents trust the school to a great extent and believe in the competence of the administration (a mistake, as this story shows), and so they refused to believe me. After all, they had been told that I had admitted to it in a BGSU survey.
My parents were incredibly worried, and my sister (showing the brilliance I’m sure she picked up from this fine institution) started looking for therapists without considering my protests. Now, here’s the catch, I DIDN’T TAKE THE SURVEY.
Which means the administration not only contacted the parents of a student who didn’t take the survey, but also the kid who did take the survey was completely overlooked.
In fact, the moment I found out we were to take this survey, I turned to Mrs. [Teacher] and said, ‘I am not doing this.’ After all, I knew the administration didn’t care about the privacy and well-being of the students to maintain anonymity and I wasn’t going to be another statistic in a sea of other statistics, ready to be picked apart and misused to push a pathetic agenda.
Frankly, I am far more outraged that the administration had the very audacity to lie and violate the privacy of the students. Where is this anonymity promised over the announcements? ‘This is completely confidential.’ You snuck in a loophole into the fine print and gave us just a few minutes to complete a massive survey.
Legally, the administration is in the right, as usual, but morally the administration has revealed itself to be a slimy snake, more like a used-car salesman than an administration. This incident reveals a great inability of rational decision-making in the administration. It also reveals a weak intellect amongst the administrators of the school, but the student body and the parents were already aware of that, so no big loss.
However, it most importantly reveals a lack of ethics and morality. The administration had the audacity to add more stress and worry in kids who were already stressed. How did the administration possibly arrive at the conclusion that outing troubled kids would help them in any sense of the word? Is the administration really that incompetent? Did they not go to college? Graduate school? I know they have papers that say they did, they should start acting like it too. If this is how you help the students, I prefer you trying to hurt us.
This wasn’t helpful, if anything, this would act as an abrasive force on the relationship between student and parent and student and administration. I demand an apology to my parents and a clarification that I am not, in fact, cutting myself. Fix this.
Sincerely, [His Name]
P.S. The students will never trust you again, especially those who were outed and didn’t want to be. Great move, very smart committing an inexcusable violation of trust.’
More details unfolded the next day. About 10 other parents were wrongly informed that their children were self-harming or abusing substances, causing them to panic and leaving the kids who actually needed help in the dark (even though, as he said, outing them was a bad idea). They took away his school computer; the VP literally went through everyone’s backpacks to find it.
He’s going to India this summer and he literally bumped up his trip a week so he could leave before graduation and not face the admins. They’ll mail his diploma to him in India. HE IS LITERALLY FLEEING THE COUNTRY.
The school rioted the day of the email. Everyone was talking about it! I seriously doubt anyone’s ever going to open up to any faculty/staff ever again, even if they really need it.
What a way to end senior year.”
You Can’t Have Your Cake And Eat It Too
“In our 10th year, some girls wanted to celebrate another girl’s birthday with a weed cake. They bought 7 grams of weed and our school dealer told them it would be too much for one small cake.
Fast forward to the birthday: the girls bring the cake to SCHOOL and shared it with several people. One of the girls ate a third of it alone and later vomited in the middle of class. Someone called an ambulance for her and she left. Because of that, the others who had the cake left because they weren’t feeling well, meaning they were scared of getting caught.
Fast further forward: all girls involved are interviewed by the school; they had to do different projects as punishment. Also, the story made it into the local newspaper and radio. They told the teachers who the dealer was and he threatened to kill the girls because they ruined his career (wanted to go into the army).
Another week later, the police have a surprise visit to our school. They went to several classes in my year and checked for illicit substance with their dogs. Apparently, they found nothing. Some people left school the second they heard that the police were coming because they were afraid.”
Saved By The Bag
“Not the incident for the entire school but at least for me:
It was during our 10th-grade year, near the festival of Diwali in India. My group decided that we would burst a firecracker in the toilet. I probably wouldn’t have done it but I didn’t want to admit in front of the group that I was chicken. Anyway, I was in charge of bringing the firecracker, a big ‘sutli bomb’ that would probably send you the ER if it exploded in your hands.
We hooked it up with an incense stick to get us a bit of time to get back to our class. When it burst, the urinal cracked, the entire school cheered, and the teachers promptly started an investigation.
They concluded it must be the 10th graders since we had the labs nearby where the cracker went off. Now, of course, no one would admit anything, no matter how much punishment they gave, so they decided instead to open and smell our SCHOOL BAGS!
Now, I was legitimately freaking out since only my bag would have the very distinct smell of the cracker, while the rest of the class was laughing and lauding the ones that did it. My group kept saying not to worry and that if I was caught, they would come clean as well.
Now there’s one thing I probably should’ve mentioned before: I hadn’t cleaned that bag in 2 years. Not once. So when the teacher put his entire head in and took a giant whiff, he literally came up coughing and said, ‘It smells like rotting eggs! Wash the freaking thing!’ and went out, coughing and retching all the time.
We were never caught.”
An Unhealthy Obsession
“My school was in Ontario, near the Québec border. A grade 12 guy lived in the middle of nowhere near the border, so one of the teachers, who lived on the Québec side, gave him rides to school. She stopped after he developed ‘unhealthy’ feelings for her and she asked that he be removed from her classroom. He kept writing her long love letters and stuff. He got her address from a phone book (common at the time), broke into her house when she was away for the weekend, and hung himself from an exposed pipe in her laundry room, leaving behind a letter explaining that she was entirely responsible for his death because she rejected his love.”
Once The Demographics Started Changing, Things Got Weird
“Two interconnected incidents. I’m old…so I was in high school at the time that Hong Kong transferred back to China. If you had come to my high school three or four years before the transfer, you would have seen a maybe 5% Chinese student population. But it jumped suddenly, like, up to about 50% in my junior year and stayed that way. We had all these Chinese students, all from Hong Kong, suddenly transfer to my high school, in a suburb of Toronto (nowhere near Chinatown, by the way). I’d say about half of those kids were there without their parents, living with other families. Their parents were expected to come later, probably after the transfer back to China had been completed.
For some reason that I never fully understood, it was a known thing that these kids usually had cash on them. Like, a lot of cash. I never really checked personally, but we used to talk about how they would have at least $1,000 in their wallets every day.
Anyway, the first incident was when a kid from another school came into our school one day, cornered the first Chinese student he saw, and beat him with a pipe and stole his wallet. The reason I think of this as ‘the incident’ is that it was the reason our school suddenly started locking the doors and you had to get in before a certain time otherwise you couldn’t get into the school without buzzing in and the office knowing you were late, and we had security guards walking around all of a sudden. Totally changed the atmosphere of the school.
The second incident happened the year after I graduated from high school. I was back home for vacation and all our little suburbia was talking about was the principal of my high school being investigated for exploitation. Apparently, she had been taking regular trips to Hong Kong and somehow convincing parents there to pay her insane amounts of money. In exchange, she would make sure their kids got into her school — which is so ridiculous… I mean, I am assuming it works this way everywhere in Canada, but you just have to live in the neighborhood of a school and be of school age to get into a school, no one should be paying to go to a public school (beyond any regular taxes, anyway). I’m honestly not entirely sure of what kind of lies she told these poor people, and I’m not sure if it had anything to do with why their kids were there without their parents and why they had so much cash on them all the time, but regardless—she exploited a whole bunch of people. And, in doing so, changed the makeup of not only our school but our entire suburb.”
A Facebook Stalker Who Wouldn’t Quit
“Super weird story, but some random Facebook account popped up, threatening to shoot up the school if this one girl didn’t fess up for something she had done. No one knew who it was, and the girl allegedly had no idea what she was supposed to fess up about.
The threats continued and the Facebook account started posting naughty videos/pictures the girl had taken, censoring it, but giving people an idea that he had intimate contact with the girl.
The school ended up going on Christmas break like three days early while the school district tried to figure how to move forward. There was a town hall meeting that a parent brought a weapon to, which created quite a stir. Feds kept looking into it. Arrests were made, but each student was released on lack of evidence.
The Facebook account progressed to basically taunting authorities that couldn’t catch him. I think at the height of it, my wife and I were at Red Robin one night, and the account posted that it heard the girl was at the mall across the street, and that a lot of people were about to die. From Red Robin, we watched the authorities converge onto the mall. The girl wasn’t there and neither was a guy with weapons of any sort.
The Facebook account ceased activity at a certain point after an admission that he was some guy in Minnesota or something that just picked a random school, girl, and town to mess with.
A few months ago, an arrest was finally made, and it was some dude in California. But man….it took forever for them to crack that case.”
“I Strongly Deny These Nasty Allegations!”
“Someone took a really big dump in the toilet and blamed it on the principal. Everyone believed it—so much so that the principal had to hold an assembly to deny the rumors.”
“Nothing Seemed Sketchy,” At Least Until The Cops Showed Up
“A teacher’s spouse died over the summer. The teacher told the students about it, would sometimes tear up a bit during class, etc. They talked openly about their dead spouse and their life together, their kids’ reaction to it and their life now after their spouse’s death. Nothing seemed sketchy.
Some time passed and one day the teacher got arrested while at school. There was news about someone being arrested as a suspect for the murder of their spouse,and even though the news didn’t include names of people, the school or the city, all the details they did mention matched with everything our teacher shared with us about them. We were literally sitting in that teacher’s classroom reading the news on our phones, waiting for someone to show up to start the lesson. We had a substitute teacher that day, obviously.
The teacher died in jail soon after being arrested. It was most likely suicide. So, in the end, it was never confirmed if they did it or not, but basically, they wouldn’t have arrested them that late after the death if they weren’t practically sure they did it.”
