Class of 2025 seniors organized the annual senior prank on the morning of May 16th, only to be interrupted by a fire evacuation with local firefighters and law enforcement called to the scene.
In the morning, Four Corners Upper School students came to school and discovered streamers, balloons, and posters all strung around the school.
“The senior prank was putting up pictures of Shazier and Childers all over the place. We decorated the rooms with beach balls, streamers, and plastic wrap. We also flipped all of their furniture upside down. The staircase was filled with streamers and signatures on any glass we could find,” senior Mia Villanueva said.
The class pulled the prank with the intention of not only pranking the staff, but also the students.
“The goal was just to leave a mark and a reminder that the class of 2025 was done. We wanted to go all out to make sure the whole school got pranked, not just the admin team,” senior Isabella Hemenway said.
Midway through first period, when students settled into class, an unexpected fire alarm blared, and students rushed outside.
“It [the fire] definitely threw everything off. It was chaotic and unexpected, and it kind of killed the momentum we had going. It was the last day of school, so a lot of people didn’t even get to see the prank,” Villanueva said.
Students had to wait in the parking lot and field while fire trucks and police cars strolled up to the school. In the beginning, it was widely suspected to be an unannounced fire drill, but that was not the case.
“I had never actually experienced a fire at the school, so I didn’t think much of the alarm at all, but then as time passed, it seemed more serious, and it started going around what happened. I felt concerned that somebody might be hurt or that our belongings might be damaged,” sophomore Zia Crane said.
Through a Facebook post on the school’s account, it was officially announced that the reason for the fire was, “a student engaged in a TikTok challenge to destroy an iPad”.
“All students are safe after we had to evacuate the building after a student engaged in a TikTok challenge to destroy an iPad. This latest challenge encourages students to insert metal items into the charging port of a device to cause sparks and create smoke… We also immediately involved law enforcement and will take all appropriate actions,” Principal Joseph Childers stated.
For the better part of 2 hours, students moved from the parking lot to the football field bleachers, and then middle schoolers went to the gym, and high schoolers to the cafeteria. At around 10 A.M., after most of the smoke cleared from the school, students were allowed back to their classrooms.
While the fact that there was a fire upset people, lots were upset by the fact that it all started as a result of a TikTok trend.
“I feel pissed because the entire senior prank should have been the main thing everyone talks about, but instead, the idiotic TikTok trend causes damage to our school and the senior prank is overshadowed,” sophomore Jeshua Galarza said.
The Senior Awards ceremony, which was originally scheduled to take place that morning, had also been rescheduled for yesterday, Monday the 21st at 9:00 am, as well as the Senior Walk at the Elementary Campus, which also took place yesterday.
On top of that, a staff reward was sponsored by Flipper’s Pizzeria.
“In the midst of today’s unexpected events, our incredible staff acted quickly to keep everyone safe- and thanks to Flipper’s Pizzeria, they were able to recharge with a delicious lunch,” FCUS said in a Facebook post.
At the end of the day, the Senior Prank was unfortunately entirely overshadowed by the chaotic events of the fire.
“We had put in all this effort, and it just felt like everything got cut short. The day was still memorable, but not for the reasons we had hoped,” Villanueva said.
