Three students are facing disciplinary action after pulling
a not-so-funny prank on a classmate: they spiked his lunch with the
prescription narcotic Vicodin. Luckily, there was no serious damage done, but
school officials and family members are understandably upset over the incident.
The boy, who is a seventh grader at John Young Middle School
in Mishawaka, Indiana, had left his lunch unattended to speak with a teacher.
When he returned to finish his food, he noticed it tasted bitter. About twenty
minutes later, he became ill with vomiting and headaches.
It could have immediately caused respiratory problems,
breathing problems, allergic reactions to the Codeine that’s in Vicodin,” says
the boy’s mother. The pranksters and the boy are all very lucky that the
consequences weren’t any more severe.
Though Superintendent Terry Barker says he’s not aware of
any police action currently being brought against the boys, he’s not shying
away from pursuing disciplinary action.
“What they think might be funny at the time is just
something they don’t think all the way through. ‘Could I be harming somebody
else?’” he explains. “And the goal of all this is just to understand that this
is just not something that we do. They have to be helped to understand the
gravity of their actions.”
For now, the students are no longer in school, and the
extent to which they will be disciplined is not yet clear. They intended the
prank as a joke, but as Barker says, they didn’t think the consequences of
their actions through.
Food pranks aren’t new to the world of schools, and even
teachers have suffered some cruel jokes from their students. One North Carolina
teacher had her coffee spiked with GluteBoost, the derriere-enhancing
supplement. Another California teacher could have suffered severe complications
if she had not immediately spit her coffee out—it had been spiked with dry
erase cleaning fluid and bleach. One Knoxville, TN teacher, whose eighth
graders spiked her soft drink with Germ-X hand sanitizer, wasn’t so lucky and
became ill after drinking the beverage.
Though students haven’t been formally charged in many of
these cases, it’s clear that in some situations the intent was malicious.
Should students be charged when they commit serious pranks like this,
maliciously or not? Or should they simply be punished according to the school’s
code of conduct?
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