Senior pranks. Where are they? We at the KO News know they exist, but they have always semed like they are mostly lackluster and completely inconvenient. Now, there have been some good pranks in the past, like building a car in the middle of Roberts, or moving the Head of the Upper School’s office to the Senior Green, but KO has had a lot of pranks, and some of them have been downright cruel. So, what’s the problem? We would say that the root of all KO senior prank problems in the past comes down to three things: they are not funny, they are inconvenient, and they are basically unknown to most students attending school.
Let’s discuss this one at a time. Recent pranks have just not been funny. Let’s examine last year’s senior prank. The seniors blocked off the parking spots at KO with their cars. Now we have to ask, what is funny about that? To us, this just seems like a total inconvenience. We can’t imagine any person driving to school, finding all the parking spots blocked off, then laughing profusely. It just misses out on any real comedy, when the point of senior pranks, at least from our perspective, is to provide a commentary on the school or to make fun of the teachers in some interesting way. This does none of that and is extremely inconvenient to everyone at the school.
Inconvenience was not only a problem with last year’s prank, though, as our school has had a history of inconvenient pranks. One example that springs to mind is how the seniors a few decades back put a pig in Roberts. That’s just animal cruelty. The problem with inconvenience in pranks is that they only really work if they aid a funny prank. If the prank is just unfunny, it makes the prank even worse as people are forced to clean up the seniors’ mess.
Finally most people just don’t know about these pranks. We don’t know if the seniors posted about their car prank, but we feel like people would have at least talked about it, but it went mostly unknown to the staff. A good senior prank should leave some sort of mark on the school, something that promotes conversation, which senior pranks have been severely lacking.
So how would we suggest this year’s seniors improve on the pranks? We understand that there may be some restrictions imposed by the school, but we feel like there is a way to make a fun prank within those guidelines. First, we would pick a topic, preferably something related to the school, a teacher, or a specific topic that most students at the school would know about. Then we would suggest you create a prank that is not a huge inconvenience to the community, but is somewhat memorable, like fliers or a poster, something along those lines. Finally, please publicize the prank, possibly through email or Instagram, something a lot of students would see.
Now, do we have any real suggestions on what this prank should be? Not really, that’s a job for the seniors. But we believe we speak for the whole of KO when we say that these pranks need to be funnier. We want you all to succeed, so go out and do it. Make something fun and memorable for the student body. That may seem hard, but we promise you, with a little bit of research, you will definitely find something. We can’t wait to see what prank you seniors put on, but please try your best to make it funny or at least something that we don’t find out about until a year later.
