Whether it’s hiding a dead fish in your favorite teacher’s desk or covering the halls with balloons, every year, seniors at most schools have an unofficial tradition of pulling a prank on the entire school.
Senior pranks are supposed to be fun and harmless; bringing the senior class together to work on a joint project that brings spirit to the school that lacks it. However, I think senior pranks should remain banned at San Rafael High School because students in the future could go too far, and it would ruin the seniors’ major milestones that they’ve been working towards.
The SRHS Class of 2026 began high school at the same time as Joe Dominguez became principal at SRHS (the 2021-2022 school year). Year by year, no class has managed to pull off a notable senior prank, but the topic still gets brought up every year. Although it has never been officially permitted, this year, SRHS decided to officially forbid senior pranks, outlining the consequences if one is pulled.
The seniors were reminded that if a prank is pulled during the last few weeks of school, seniors’ graduation, prom, and senior night would be stripped away, and a suspension would be added on top of that. The class of 2026 hoped that Mr. Dominguez would show some leniency toward them and not be so harsh when it came time for their senior year, especially since, this year, many students were looking forward to doing a senior prank.
This decision to harshly punish any senior prank was communicated to everyone via an email by Mr. Dominguez at the start of the second semester of the Class of 2026’s senior year. “Pranks tend to breed more pranks, and so I have a responsibility to remind seniors very clearly that if you do anything, you will lose out on your senior year activities,” said Mr. Dominguez when asked why the email was sent out.
The senior prank is this over-the-top, planned-out event in every student’s life meant to bring the class together. However, the administration shouldn’t just wait around for a prank to get out of hand. This decision by Mr. Dominguez is honestly for the best, because if pranks start to become more frequent, the possibility of students planning something crazy increases.
Most students argue that there’s no way someone would ever be dumb enough to pull a prank that would hurt anyone or anything in any way. Seniors just want to play a mildly disruptive prank on their favorite teacher and have some laughs. Alex Macias, a Senior at SRHS, said, ”I would just get a large group of students to follow the principal around for the whole day.”
Regardless of what students say, pranks rarely stay harmless. We’ve already seen students before their senior year throwing a trash can down the stairs, covering a student with the trash juice, and targeting teachers because of their race, and deep-faking their faces on a Victoria’s Secret model, in one case, during class, in front of the teacher’s own son.
Across the state, there have already been reports of senior pranking getting out of hand, resulting in thousands of dollars in property damage and even students at risk of getting arrested. At Malibu High School, the class of 2025 went so far that they pulled their prank and ended up on CBS. MHS’s class of 2025 super-glued locks to 20 classroom doors, making them inaccessible, spray-painted messages on the walls, including inappropriate drawings, and pushed a golf cart down the stairs.
Punishing those types of pranks after they happen doesn’t stop the impact that they have on the people or the environment around them. It just raises the bar for future classes to push past, leading them to go crazier than previous years.
The email sent out by Mr. Dominguez wasn’t an addition to the rules but rather a call to attention of the already existing rule that has been in place for years. The senior prank is and will continue to stay banned for the reason that students can’t be trusted to keep a prank fun and safe. There are other ways to celebrate our senior year without the risk of damaging the school or others. Banning these pranks protects everyone from getting hurt and risking the hard work of the past 12 years just for a prank gone wrong.
