It doesn't matter who we are or where we went to school, we all had a scandal (or two) at our respective schools growing up. Some are worse than others, but we all have those unforgettable stories from our formative years.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
Their Foreign Exchange Trip Taught Them About The Darker Side Of Life
“There was a foreign exchange student program being run at my school that was started by the principal of the attached elementary school. For the duration of the program, her husband was violating the exchange students they were bringing into their home. This went on for about 11 years until the exchange students built up the courage to report it to the police.
The police kicked down the door of their house and arrested the husband. The principal left the school because of it. The guy got bailed out of jail and tried to leave the country, but he ended up jumping off a parking garage, ending his life.
I can’t imagine how the parents of those kids felt after they let their children come to America to get an education only to find out that their children were living in a house with a predator.”
They Had A List, They Checked It Twice
“My junior high school had a lot of ‘at risk’ youth.
The year after Columbine, some kids were making plans to re-enact the 1999 school shooting and had all these detailed drawings of how they were going to murder a bunch of people. Well, two girls blew the whistle and got a locker raid done where they found the kids’ ‘hit list.’
Well, the girls had to change schools because of all the bullying they received. The wannabe shooters were hailed as heroes by the student body, even by people who were on their hit list.
Many of these particular kids were pure evil. This is not an exaggeration – I remember on 9/11, where we watched the news and when we were told some people jumped to their deaths, some people laughed their heads off. You could have taken someone like Ted Bundy or Andrei Chikatilo, put them in a room with these kids, and both Bundy & Chikatilo would get stuck in the door as they tried to flee to the nearest church to beg forgiveness from God. Seriously – some of the kids I went to Jr. High with went straight to prison from High School, some didn’t even wait until they graduated high school to go to jail. They were beyond redemption at only 12.”
This Tragedy Sent Ripples Through The Entire Community
“My school had one of the best soccer teams in our school district. It was, in fact, the only claim to fame our school had because we sucked at every other sport. Our school was so small that we ended up having a lot of freshmen on our Varsity team. We actually had what was considered one of the best teams we’d ever had at that point, as the freshmen and sophomores who joined this Varsity squad had siblings who were juniors and seniors training them before they got into the high school sports system. Our first few official games went so well that during Homecoming, the team decided to throw a huge party, for which a small group of alumni (graduates who never grew past their glory days of Varsity soccer) provided a keg. An alumnus, a freshman, and two sophomores ended up going on a supply run to a different town. They went missing that night.
A countywide search ensued. Five days later, a local trucker noticed some damage on a bridge and called it in. Nearby, a car was found, turned onto its head. Their jersey numbers were decommissioned and their respective jerseys were hung on the walls above the gym doors in glass display cases with plaques stating the dangers of underage drinking. No charges were brought up at this time because it was deemed punishment enough.
The next year, however, the Varsity team hosted another party in their memory. The coach supplied the goodies this time, later saying he did it so no one would be going out late driving under the influence. Instead of that, however, several assaults against young ladies were reported and the entire Varsity team was banned from sports. A few people complain, but were shot down because we just dealt with this last year! Charges WERE filed this time, and not only was the coach canned, but the current Board of Education for the small area kicked a few members out as well.
The area still has a massive underage drinking problem.”
His Secret Addiction Cost Him His Freedom
“The choir teacher at my fairly prestigious high school was embezzling money from the choir department through overcharging students for travel, concerts, and field trips to fund his gambling addiction. He ended up stealing around $60,000 over the course of about 20 years.
One of the other teachers was trying to hook up with underage girls. Girls in the school were getting creepy private messages, so they told their parents and their parents told law enforcement, who then set up a sting operation with a young looking officer. He had a pregnant wife who worked in the same district at my elementary school. She’s a wonderful woman and I felt terrible for her.”
These “Good Ole Boys” Were Anything But Good
“At my school, there were these awful boys who were basically wannabe rednecks. They drove these pickup trucks that they decorated with Confederate flags. Even if you don’t think Confederate flags are racist (which I think most people can agree, they’re pretty racist), it’s representative of SOUTHERN independence and nationalism, and this was in NEW ENGLAND, so it made absolutely no sense.
The school didn’t have assigned parking spaces, but these boys kind of claimed this one section for themselves. One day, a girl decided to park there because there was a space and the rest of the lot was pretty much full. Apparently, that was the worst thing she could do because the group of boys scratched out her Bernie Sanders sticker and threatened to tow her car if she ever did it again.
Well, she never parked there again, but someone else did, and the boys responded by towing the kid’s car and slashing his tires. So this kid went to the administration and they basically told him that they couldn’t do anything because ‘he shouldn’t have provoked them’ and ‘they couldn’t prove who had done it.’ Instead, the kid was told never to park there again, and the boys got to keep harassing people.
I think, at one point, the school tried to make them join sports teams to give the kids structure and discipline, but none of them showed up to any of the practices or games. Honestly, these kids are just complete scum, and it makes me so mad the school never did anything to stop them.”
All Of That For Some Extra Credit?
“These two girls were straight-A student types. One day, a teacher did something to tick them off; I can’t remember exactly what, something to do with not giving them extra credit because they didn’t follow the instructions to the letter.
He had two goldfish in his classroom that he took care of for a long time and they were pretty big. He came in one day and one of them was stabbed into the wall with a note that said, ‘Give us the extra credit or the other one gets it.’
From what I heard, he was pretty heartbroken. The two girls received mild punishment because of their good grades. One of my friends and I bought him another fish as a gesture afterward, but I think it may have been too soon because he seemed perturbed when we brought it in.”
Each Scandal Was Worse Than The Previous
“Some kid’s dad beat up a teacher because he wouldn’t pass the kid.
The kid didn’t do homework at all, missed every test, and was a jerk. His dad jumped the teacher in front of the police station.
Everyone in the town knew what happened. Everyone hated the guy because he drove around 3 am on a motorcycle.
The kid became one of the most hated people in the school because the teacher was well liked by everyone. He just played it off until someone got into a fight him and beat the crap out of him. He threatened to sue the school, the students, teachers, everyone. His final words were, ‘I’m telling my dad.’
He was a high school senior. He dropped out two months before graduation.
There was one more major scandal but its really messed up. There was with a German girl who was the sweetest girl ever. She was fun and very curious about American culture.
They started teaching us about WWII around the time she came to school. People did not react kindly to her. When I walked home with her, people would call her Nazi or throw things at her, even at school. She stopped coming to school when someone threw a huge rock at her and damaged her left eye. The school did nothing, but it was talked about for some time between the parents and students. I believe a huge PTA meeting was held about it.
The next one is worse.
An Asian girl came to our town via a student exchange program. She really did enjoy the school and was well liked. I don’t remember talking much about her but everyone seemed to really like her because she was very polite. A year after she was accepted at the school, we started taking in students from the neighboring towns, and in case you didn’t know the towns next to ours aren’t… good. They are awful. Really awful.
I don’t know the details because I only heard everything second hand, but someone said a student teacher found the Asian girl walking down the hallway bloodied up and crying. She was violated in the school bathroom by one of the new students we accepted from the town over.
How did we know it was him? He was bragging about it. Even days before he would talk about how he would make that girl ‘his.’ There were PTA meetings, police were called, the kids (all three of them) were expelled, there were programs started to prevent this, there were anti-gang squads in the area formed by neighborhood watches and police. It was really bad. The worst part was that the victim became an afterthought.
The kid who did it, we knew he was bad. Everyone hated him because he acted tough. He used to make gang threats all the time. Talked about how he would make our town his ‘territory’ and how certain girls would be his. The school had constant meetings with the kid and told him to knock it off.
The school stopped bringing in kids from the neighboring towns after that for about eight years. They just started again, and I heard the new kids aren’t as bad but still not great. They had to hire police to stand at every entrance now. A good thing is they aren’t so much ‘police’ as they retired veterans. The reason for this was a different incident altogether.”
When A Rivalry Goes Too Far
“When I was in high school, a teacher (Dr. Pepe) got arrested after class one day because he had attempted to hire a hitman to kill a teacher at another school in the district. Apparently, they worked together previously, but a feud broke out and got so bad that Dr. Pepe transferred to my school because he thought the other teacher was responsible for every bad thing that happened to him. So obviously, killing him was the best option. The guy was nuts.”
Small Town, Big Drama
“So this affair happened at my high school while I was attending college.
I went to a high school in a small town (population of 520) in the Bible Belt of the United States. When I was a sophomore in high school, my principal started dating this young woman. She already had a child with another man. After a few years, they had a child together.
After a couple of years, they got a divorce. A few weeks later, everyone learned why. The lady was having an affair with our high school music/humanities teacher. To top that off, the music teacher was married, was also my preacher, and the mayor of our town! The music teacher’s wife was horrified after she learned the news and left him, of course, and his three children didn’t talk to him for months. The music teacher ended up marrying the young woman, moved away, and are happily together apparently.”
In The Name Of Science?
“My high school biology teacher knew a guy at the animal control center and got some puppies that were about to be put down, and let the class watch him feed them to his boa constrictor.
He was making a big deal about it and wanted to let as many people who wanted to watch it.
One of the students called the police. The feeding was stopped by the administration and the puppies were adopted.
The teacher eventually fed some more appropriate animals to the snake, later on. Mice don’t have feelings, so it was ok.”
Top Of The Class…With A Little Help
“The valedictorian of my class had an affair with our recently divorced history teacher and cheated on her math tests. She was still able to be valedictorian as the investigations continued past the end of grading for the semester.
In college, an anonymous guy would flash female joggers in broad daylight on busy streets and run away. The police never caught him. There was also some creepy clown sightings and a pyromaniac lighting doors on fire in the dorms. They were never caught either.”
This Is Why We Have Background Checks
“We had a new math teacher at my middle school. He was kind of intimidating but was a good teacher. One day, some sixth grader was messing around in the computer lab and decided to start Googling teachers. It turns out, the new math teacher had killed his father in a murder-suicide pact but hadn’t done the suicide part. He had been charged but let out after two years.
This was a private school. Why they never did a background check still confuses me. He eventually was found out and fired.”
He Totally Thought His Little Joke Would Crack Everyone Up
“The principal stopped by a class and was chatting with the students he knew from our football team.
Before leaving, he noticed one of the black students/players sitting in the back away from his teammates. Attempting to make a joke, he yelled to him ‘[student], it’s 2015! You don’t have to sit at the back anymore!’ No one thought it was funny, as you can imagine.
Long story short, he made the news and many people were demanding his resignation. He somehow kept his job after that whole ordeal, but I heard he’s still not the same man he used to be.
All because of one offhand racist joke.”
Why You Should Keep A Low Profile
“I went to a private high school that had about 30 students total. Now, there were two types of people at this high school: those that knew I was absolutely and utterly stoned all the time but didn’t care, and those that were too sheltered to even have the understanding of what that was like.
Now, I’m not glorifying what I did, in fact, that’s a really bad way to deal with your dislike of high school. But anyways, I was the only one who had ever been high at that school. I religiously carried around a little vape pen with pot oil that I used pretty much everywhere. Our campus was spread out, not a lot of teachers, so I could walk around the acreage and not really be noticed. Actually, all the staff and most of the students had a really good opinion of me. I was the good-hearted kid who went to all the school events, stayed out of trouble, and made decent grades. I was also a freshman the year that this incident went down.
Well, what happened? There was a small locker room on campus, with a small connected bathroom and a few thin and tall windows on the other side. It was pretty unmonitored for the most part. My locker wasn’t in there, but I’d hang out in there every once in a while. What I didn’t know, is that this was pretty much the headquarters for everything vape pen related at the school.
Kids would (very stupidly) vape so much that the room would cloud up. Older kids would buy and sell vapes and oils to younger kids who weren’t 18 yet. Things like that. I didn’t know any of this was happening. Of course, the staff at the school slowly started catching on.
Eventually, they made an announcement at an assembly that they knew SOME of the students were often using ‘Electronic Vaping Devices’, and that when they were caught, there would be severe consequences. They also said that if anyone knew about someone doing this, they should speak up right then and there.
I froze and got quite close to literally crapping myself. I felt my weed pen in my pocket and I nearly had a heart attack because, to me, I was the ONLY person they were talking about. I didn’t know about the other kids at all. I was sure someone was going to rat me out. Nothing.
Slowly, kids started dropping like flies over the next few weeks. They were getting caught and depending on what they did exactly, some of them even got suspended for a good while. People got in fights and one kid even transferred schools.
For the rest of my high school career, I still had that vape pen and oil, spent every day of my life really really stoned, and I never once was even suspected of anything. I was even stoned when I flipped my tassle at graduation. I never got caught and never looked back. I hope those other kids turned out okay.”
The Keys To Infamy
“It happened before I started going there, but one of the students obtained a copy of the school’s master key, made 500 copies, and sent it to random students in the school’s directory. The school threatened to call the FBI on the people who took part in the scheme if they didn’t come forward, so they surrendered.
The masterminds ended up getting off pretty easy; they weren’t allowed to walk at graduation and they had to pay a portion of the cost to replace every lock in the school, but they were never charged criminally and nothing permanent ever happened to them. The people who received the keys weren’t punished, though they did have to turn in the keys.
The incident was actually featured in an episode of that old MTV show High School Stories. My school wanted no part in the episode and refused to let the film crew on school property.”