Written by Elizabeth Chung

Throughout the early ‘90s, math teacher Dave Deggeller witnessed a variety of senior pranks at Gunn. “When I first started teaching here, the idea of the senior prank was more of a tradition and pranks were more colorful,” Deggeller said.

Deggeller’s favorite senior prank consisted of string: lots and lots of string.  “I arrived early in the morning, [and] a lot of the seniors had gotten here much earlier and brought a lot of string with them,” he said. “They put string between every two trees. Really, every two objects you can think of had string between them and it was so dense that you can barely walk through the batcave or the quad without running into strings.”

Although Deggeller thought the prank to be “very artistic and creative”, the principal did not. “Unfortunately, the principal did not agree [with my thoughts] and by 9 a.m. most of the string had been cut down,” Deggeller said.

Although the prank had been cut short, Deggeller still remembers it as one of the most amusing senior pranks he has ever seen at Gunn. “I think it was a surprise, he said. “It was very memorable and sweet.”

Deggeller remembers the string prank more creative than destructive, unlike some senior pranks that went off limit and did not turn out humorous.  “There are a lot of senior pranks that are unfortunately destructive, for instance, when people put raw spaghetti in the locks of classrooms,” he said. “Not only does it disrupts teaching, but it is also very expensive to re-key the entire school. So unlike those destructive pranks, I thought the string was very elegant and artistic.”

Deggeller believes that there have not been a lot of pranks on campus in recent years due to many of the changes that the administration went through over the years, including changes of school policies and the rate of tolerance. “Perhaps the administration was more tolerant of senior pranks [in the past], because the last five or six years I don’t remember any senior pranks,” Deggeller said.