Carson High senior prank leads to citations

One senior prank led to nearly two dozen Carson High students ending their school year with traffic citations.

As a part of the traditional end of the year prank, seniors parked their vehicles haphazardly Thursday morning in the senior parking lot at CHS. The prank resulted in transportation issues for other students, school officials said.

“The students parked in a non-uniform fashion and were blocking the entrances so the buses were unable to easily get to the school,” said Superintendent Richard Stokes.

He said the administration went over the PA system and gave four warnings to students to move their vehicles before citations were issued. In the end, about 20 cars didn’t oblige and received a $25 traffic citations by the school.

Concerned community members were upset at the school’s action.

“Just let them be kids, it isn’t like they vandalized anything,” one person told the Appeal. “I don’t think it is fair, they could have all cut school but they didn’t they just came up with a joke.”

The person claimed students couldn’t walk in graduation next Saturday if they didn’t pay off the ticket, however, Stokes disputed that claim.

“The citations will not prevent the students from graduating; those are two completely separate things,” Stokes said.

Several parents and family members complained on social media calling it unfair and harmless and said the students deserve to have some fun.

While some saw the joke as harmless, some officials weren’t as sympathetic.

“I don’t know what they expected, there were rules with the school’s parking agreements and they broke the rules,” said Sheriff Ken Furlong. “They can’t break the rules and not expect consequences to follow just because they say it is a prank ...t he seniors pranked the school and the school pranked back, I guess.”

He said the Sheriff’s Office issued eight citations through their School Resource Officer and the district’s security staff issued the remaining citations.

“In hindsight it looks like the seniors did it as a prank as best as we can tell, but there was sufficient blockage to where the high school felt that these measures were necessary,” Furlong said.