Senior pranks usually harmless, until they're not

WENTZVILLE, Mo. (AP) - Like prom, homecoming and commencement, the senior prank has become part of life in high school. Administrators typically accommodate a little teenage silliness, as long as it doesn't cross the line into property destruction.

Sometimes it does. A Saran-wrapped car is one thing. Destroying trees or spray-painting graffiti is another.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/1KppuiV) reports that last week, seniors at Holt High School in Wentzville uprooted three 35-year-old trees from planters in an atrium near the school cafeteria and tried to replant them in a softball field.

The root structures were destroyed, and the prank became a crime. Ten seniors were arrested Thursday.

It wasn't the first time a prank got out of hand in the St. Louis area. In 2003, Mehlville High School students spray-painted walls and lit portable toilets on fire. In 2011, three students at Troy Buchanan High School were charged with felonies after building a swimming pool inside the high school commons.

In addition to what happened in Wentzville, someone spray-painted signs, buildings and cars after Kirkwood High School's annual "Toga Night" on Tuesday. Police are searching for the culprits.

Some school administrators try to ward off dangerous and criminal pranks by cooperating with harmless ones, even lending a hand.

Mary LaPak, a spokeswoman for the Wentzville School District, said officials at Timberland High, another of the district's three high schools, allowed the band to march through the halls playing "The Final Countdown" by the 1980s heavy metal band Europe.

Kirkwood High also had an approved prank. On Thursday, students found more than 2,000 plastic cups filled with water in the school commons, spelling out "SENIORS."

Kirkwood Principal Michael Havener said the strategy of collaborating with students on pranks has worked well to reduce destruction.

"I would say there's been instances of odors, dead animals, live animals being placed on campus," he said. "Those stand out the most. However, by coordinating it, we don't have those any longer."

LaPak said administrators at Holt High had let students know that they would work with them on possible pranks. But that invitation was rebuffed.