On Thursday last week, an army of seniors spent their last day of high school pranking the rest of the school. Their biggest pranks (surprise, surprise) included soaking students and staff with water balloons and blocking entrances with tape, which played out throughout the hours before lunch break. 

With COVID-19 restrictions and stricter rules protecting the schools’ “values”, several

 (actually funny) pranks were denied by the staff, disappointing everyone involved.

Classic jokes like messing up classrooms were not even allowed by the faculty due to the concern that it would be a “distraction to the learning process” as one senior commented. Another senior mentioned how the “administration banned 80%” of what they wanted to do.”

The seniors intended to egg people, creating stereotypes of different teachers, exposing expelled students, who even agreed to be involved in the festivities. But of course, the ZIS administration put their foot down and allowed none of it. This created an absolute stinker of a senior day and ruined what otherwise would have been a very special day for the entire student body.

Before the day even started, students already felt demotivated to participate, as they had extremely low expectations for how the day would play out. Even the seniors, who planned out the event themselves, reported that their expectations before the prank day were “low” and they “expected the day to be a failure”. 

One student even went as far as to say that he was as excited for senior prank day as he was for “a long math class”. This surely goes to show the tremendous amount of hype that the seniors drummed up for the day. 

Fast-forward to the day itself, the tables had suddenly turned around of the emotions of the seniors. Most students felt as if they had a blast, squirting water on the “tiny” 9th graders. And that lasted for an entire 20 minutes!  Then boredom set in, the 9 a.m. deadline for the end of the pranks and jokes passed, and the day vanished just as quickly as it began. 

Surprisingly, no student responded that the day flopped. Although a craving for novelty amid this long COVID pandemic makes even the mildest senior prank day seem incredibly exciting. 

The consequences of this senior prank day have set further restrictions for upcoming senior prank days. Principal Mr. Markus claimed that the use of water “would most likely be banned” for future senior prank days, as “all it does is create a mess”. 

Humor and fun are likely to follow under the administration’s “War on Senior Prank Day”. The anti-prank rhetoric Mr. Markus is pushing for will only lead to the rapid decline of one of the most exciting and anticipated days of the school year. 

However, the 2021 seniors don’t need to worry about this anymore. They, surprisingly, seem satisfied with this year’s senior prank day. So while they move on from ZIS, senior prank day’s future looks grimmer than ever.