List of school pranks

A school prank—to be carefully distinguished from school bullying or assault—is a prank primarily occurring in a school setting. The effect and intent of school pranks may include everyday play and supposedly consensual bonding behaviour. Genuine pranks can involve elaborate planning and teamwork, and they are generally harmless to all concerned, since they will not involve property damage, bullying or physical harm to anyone. When the prank has run its course, the prankster is expected to restore matters to the status quo ante, i.e., the way things were before the prank took place.

If not checked, vigorous but usually inoffensive bonding behaviour, however, can easily progress into physically or psychologically abusive hazing “traditions” of military units and fraternities. While much hazing amounts to severe bullying, its more extreme forms, as well as physical abuse, assaults and sexual assaults, are overt crimes.

Common pranks

A practical joke or prank is a mischievous joke played on someone, typically causing embarrassment, confusion, or discomfort,^[1] and is generally lighthearted, reversible, and non-permanent. An extraordinary example of these relatively harmless pranks is the history of University of British Columbia engineering undergraduates, who regularly arrange stunts like suspending the body of a Volkswagen Beetle from major bridges in Vancouver and elsewhere. Often these so-called practical jokes are thoughtlessly mean-spirited or cruel and may harm the victim and engender a lack of empathy in the perpetrator. Attitude to specific jokes is not constant and jokes that were once thought amusing may no longer be seen as such.

• Short sheeting, also known as a 'wallet bed' (lit en portefeuille) in France or an 'apple-pie bed' in the U.K.,^[2] is a prank that has sometimes been done at boarding schools, college dormitories, summer camps, and in military barracks. The perpetrator untucks a made bed's top sheet at the foot end of the bed and folds it to simulate two sheets (an undersheet and a top sheet) at the head end of the bed. The victim will be unable to lie down without remaking the bed.^[2]

Forms of school bullying

School bullying is one form of victimization or physical abuse which has sometimes been unofficially encouraged, ritualized or even minimized as a sort of prank by teachers or peers. The main difference between pranks and bullying is establishment of power inequity between the bully and the victim that lasts beyond the duration of the act.^[3] Unlike true pranks, bullying is always harmful to its victims, and if the bully goes unpunished, the bully’s future behaviour may become more severe, making him or her a danger to other students.

Petty assaults

Example of “circle game” bullying tactic.

• Circle game: In this so-called game, a bully holds his or her arm downward, forming his or her hand into a circle. If the potential victim is tricked into looking at the bully’s hand, the bully takes this as licence to hit the victim. This form of physical abuse is the central theme of one episode of the Malcolm in the Middle television series.^[4]
• Debagging: In this form of abuse, also called panting or 'cacking' in the United Kingdom, sometimes known as 'dacking' in Australia, the bully gets behind his or her intended victim to forcibly tug down the victim's waistband and underwear, leaving the victim partially naked.^[2]
• Flat foot: A bully tries to make someone fall by purposely treading on the victim’s shoe heel or kicking the heel forwards. In the “flat tire” variant, if the bully steps down as the foot is lifting, he or she may cause the shoe to come off the victim’s foot.^[2]
• Kick-me: A bully will pretend to be overly friendly and slap his or her unsuspecting victim on the back while secretly taping on a note reading “Kick me”.^[2]
• Indian burn: known in various countries as "Chinese burn”, "snake bite", "eraser burn" or “nettle burn”: The abuser firmly grasps the victim's forearm with both hands, then twisting in opposite directions, stretching tender skin and making it red and sore.^[2]
• Noogie: Also called a "scone" in some parts of Australia (e.g. I will scone you). The bully vigorously rubs the knuckles of two fingers or the heel of the hand against the surface of the victim’s scalp, stretching the skin and pulling the hair, sometimes whilst trapping the victim in a headlock.^[2]
• Pink belly: One bully holds the victim down on his or her back, while the other bully lifts their shirt to expose their abdomen and slaps it with the open palm of one or both hands until it is red and painful to the touch.^[5]
• Shoe-lacing: The bully ties a victim's shoelaces together or to a chair leg or even secretly cuts them with scissors, typically while the victim is seated and distracted. This may cause a trip or stumble when the victim attempts to get up and move. The bully may also taunt or provoke the victim into running after him.^[2]
• Spitball: A vandal or bully chews a clump of paper, mixing it with his or her saliva, then throws, spits or blows it through a straw at a person or object. Larger spitballs are sometimes flicked with the fingers or with a flexible ruler or a rubber band. If not removed from some types of surface, the vandal’s spitballs will dry and harden into a sort of paper cement. If directed at a person, the victim will experience humiliation but not usually pain.^[2]
• Towel snap, towel whip, rat tail or kangaroo tail: In a communal shower or elsewhere, a bully twists a dampened towel along the diagonal to form a sort of whip with a towel corner at the tip, then snaps the towel as if cracking a whip, striking the victim with the end tip of the towel and causing pain.^[2]
  

  A wedgie is a type of bullying.
• Wedgie: In a wedgie, gotchie or grundy, an abuser, acting alone or as part of a group, pulls up on a victim's underwear so that it wedges up between the buttocks causing a painful stinging/burning sensation. In 2006, an Albany, New York teacher was arrested for child endangerment after allegedly perpetrating such an assault on a ten-year-old pupil.^[2][6] In 2007, two second-grade students created "wedgie-proof" underwear with a tear-away waistband for the Central Ohio Invention Competition 2007; their invention got them into the finals.^[7]
• Wet Willy: In elementary schools and elsewhere, an assailant licks his or her finger, then gets behind a victim and inserts the finger into an ear canal.^[8]

Torture and indecent assaults

• Aruba (Chinese: 阿鲁巴): known as Happy Corner in Hong Kong. In Aruba, several bullies separate the victim's (often male) legs and rub his groin against a door, a corner or a pole.^[9] Its name varies depending on region and era. Aruba is essentially a kind of school violence and sexual abuse. In March 2010, the Affiliated High School of Peking University banned it due to its potential damage to physical and psychological health.^[10] Originating from Taiwan, it has become very popular in Mainland China through mainstream media. For instance, in the film You Are the Apple of My Eye (《那些年，我们一起追的女孩》), there was a scene of Aruba.^[11]
• Kancho: In Japan, a bully may clasp his or her hands together so that the index fingers are pointing out and attempt to poke a victim’s anal region.^[12] In South Korea this form of assault is known as Dongjim.^[13]
• Nipple cripple: This form of assault is also known as "titty twister," "purple nurple," etc. The bully grasps a person's nipple between thumb and forefinger, and then twists it, often causing extreme pain for the victim.
• Swirlie (also known as bog washing or dunnyflushing): Two or more abusers collude to suspend a victim upside down over a toilet bowl while flushing. As with the illegal waterboarding practice, this form of torture can result in the drowning of the victim. Incidents of swirling have been prosecuted in courts, and the hazards of this cruel practice are not always the obvious ones. For example, Jonathan, a Mexican seven-year-old student from Encinillas, Jalisco attending Valentín Gómez Farías elementary school in Tlacuitapa, died March 9, 2013, of cardiac arrest while being rushed to hospital. His death came after an advanced and worsening lung infection precipitated by an incident of "swirly" abuse, led by a ten-year-old schoolmate who allegedly had a prolonged history of bullying Jonathan, a history which even included regularly beating and robbing the intimidated boy.^[14]

See also

• List of hazing deaths in the United States

References

Further reading

• Steinberg, Neil (1992). If at all possible, involve a cow: the book of college pranks. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-07810-2.