Don’t Blame Everthing On Panthers
Recently a group of students from Mead took it upon themselves to visit Gonzaga Prep and conduct a homecoming prank. It had been planned for weeks. It was not malicious. It was not meant to bring harm to Prep.
It has gotten out of hand.
This is to set the record straight and to prove to teachers and fellow students that we are not hoodlums who should be thrown out of school and into jail.
On the night of Oct. 16, about 25 students met at Albertsons at 10 p.m. to stock up on toilet paper. Due to the large number gathered in the lot, some of whom I have never seen before, a sheriff’s deputy showed up and sent us all running up to McDonald’s. We regrouped and headed to Prep.
We went through an amazing amount of TP in a very short time. Then we had some slack time while waiting for the bails of straw to arrive. Time to admire our work and snap a couple of photos. The truck arrived sporting 10 bales of straw; they were quickly spread all over the front lawn.
We left, with a quick stop to inform the local news about our achievement. From there everyone went home. It was all very exciting, but not in a criminal way.
The next morning the air was crackling with the news going through the school. Some of it was true but most of it exaggerated.
One fact we did not know was a window had been broken by a thrown pumpkin. This was something we had specifically agreed that we would not do. Since there were so many people there, I worried that someone had gotten out of hand. But recently a Prep football player admitted to throwing the pumpkin.
The ASB class went to clean up and five of the people involved decided that if people from our school had to clean it up, it might as well be the people who did it. So the five of us headed to Prep.
At Prep we saw what a thorough job we had done. Even some Prep students complimented our good job. Prep students and staff were more than accommodating. They supplied us with rakes and ladders and even brought us doughnuts.
Prep’s passing period became a social hour on the front lawn. There was no animosity from Prep. The phrase of the moment was, “You guys did a great job,” and “How did you get that toilet paper that high up into that tree?”
Later, the other people involved went to our principal and confessed. As we began discussing the proper punishment, we found out what had happened after our original prank.
The next night there was an incident of REAL vandalism. A group of people, not necessarily from Mead, went to Prep during the football game and broke windows in cars, stole stereos and keyed some cars. One of the most disturbing things was someone keyed an obscenity into a new ‘97 pickup.
This was obviously different people from the night before because the people who did the original prank were all at the football game.
Still, on behalf of the students involved in the original prank, we are truly sorry that it has come to this. It started off as a goodhearted prank. We didn’t think about possible repercussions of a “prank” in the hands of idiots.
The Mead/G-Prep rivalry has been such a good “revelry” for such a long time. It’s sad that we risked ruining such a tradition for such a petty prank. Again, I speak for everyone when I say we are truly sorry for what has happened as a result of our actions.