By Jayden Kimpel, Staff Writer & Copy Editor
From removing soap dispensers, to clogging toilets with cafeteria fruit and toilet paper, to stealing items off of teachers’ desks a social media trend that began in September has triggered a wave of bad behavior by a few IT students.
Indian Trail school officials immediately tried to regulate the damage. “I’m concerned with who we are as a community,” Principal Scott Kennow said.
“Many staff and students spend more time here than we do in our own homes. We’re very fortunate to have such a big and beautiful school, and my brain really struggles to understand the value of damaging and stealing school property,” Kennow said.
While the TikTok trend has faded, primarily after the company shut down the hashtag associated with the app, a few students are still up to no good.
Not only were the bathrooms affected, the school library also took some hits. Puzzles were broken up, student art was damaged, and 3D print items were stolen.
“It seems as if we can’t have nice things anymore,” IT Librarian Jennifer Lindsay said. “Scoring popularity points on social media really doesn’t distract from the fact that people have worked hard on these things displayed [in the library]. Students don’t care about other students, or even teachers anymore.”
According to the National Education Association, teachers spend $500 to $1,000 of their own money for their classrooms.
“Getting things stolen from you in your own classroom feels like someone stole your purse or wallet,” Lindsay said. “You feel violated. It’s utter nonsense to always be on alert and start being very defensive about your items. It damages the trust between teachers and students.”
While students may be tempted to engage in such behaviors to gain attention, there could be serious consequences.
“Depending on the situation, you could be suspended from school, or referred for a law enforcement citation,” Kennow said.
“If it’s repeated, you could be expelled. If you’re expelled, state law says that other districts are not required to accept you, so you could be done with school altogether and not get a diploma at all. Your future could be jeopardized based on your decisions in high school.”
If students are caught engaging in illegal activity and damaging school property, fees are assigned to those involved.
“Fixing [the damage] is not cheap,” Kennow said. “There’s a cost for each broken item, along with labor costs. If a student takes a soap dispenser off the wall, there are charges for the dispenser itself, the bag of soap, and the labor costs for both custodians, plumbers, and carpenters.”
It could cost up to $70 to replace a soap dispenser.
Other students are disappointed in the damage, with some saying it’s created a backlash. Ever since the peak of the trend, staff has increased enforcement of the policy of no phones inside classrooms.
“I’m tired of all of this,” Student Council Vice President Lily Peterson said. “Rules are becoming a lot stricter, and there’s a lot less trust from both teacher to student, and student to student.
“Many more people are afraid to leave their belongings out. It’s just pointless to damage priceless items, and make more work for those who already do so much for our school,” she said.
While social media trends are designed to be popular for a short period of time, stopping the damage to schools is the job of the students.
“I really hope students start becoming self-aware, and put in effort to stop the damages,” Lindsay said. “Students are always seeing much more than teachers do, so it’s really the students’ responsibility to do what’s right and notice how it affects our school.”