Senior swap day: Alabama students who traded schools as prank suspended

You may have heard of high school students celebrating “senior skip day.” A group of Alabama students attempted a “senior swap day” as a prank, but school officials were not amused.

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Students in Chilton County said they were threatened with suspensions, removal from sports teams and possible jail time after their “harmless” prank,” AL.com and WVTM-TV reported.

Seniors at Chilton County High School in Clanton and Jemison High School in Jemison did the class swap on Monday, The Clanton Advertiser reported.

“We thought it would be a great idea because no one has done it before, and we thought we would go down in history,” Haleigh Greer, a senior at Jemison High School, told the newspaper.

“We didn’t do anything to hurt their school and Jemison kids did nothing to hurt ours,” Chilton County senior Rileigh Payes wrote in a Facebook post. “We all wanted to have a little fun before we graduated, but I guess not.”

Twelve students from Chilton County High School and four from Jemison participated in the prank, The Clanton Advertiser reported.

“Me and three other friends got there (at Jemison), we get into a class (and) we did the pledge of allegiance with everybody,” Chilton County senior Mallorie Adams told the newspaper. “We are kind of unnoticed at this point.”

“We ended up getting kicked out of the first classroom, so we leave that one, we go back to our cars, and we are waiting on the second-period bell to ring, so we can go back in,” Adams said. “The bell rings we all walk in.”

At Chilton County, the students also went unnoticed for a while.

“We went to a classroom and sat there from about 7:50 to 9:20 (a.m.), basically the whole class period,” Greer told The Clanton Advertiser.

When teachers and administrators realized what was happening, students said their phones were confiscated, their vehicles were towed and they were handed three-day suspensions, AL.com reported. The students were also banned from opposite school premises for up to a year.

Chilton County Schools Superintendent Jason Griffin released a brief statement Wednesday morning, WVTM reported.

“Chilton County Schools follows law, policy and procedure in all aspects of day-to-day operations,” Griffin wrote.

According to the school district’s code of conduct, law enforcement typically does not get involved in disciplinary matters unless a student harms someone or breaks the law, AL.com reported.

Greer said she and her fellow pranksters from Jemison each received three days of suspension, The Clanton Advertiser reported.

Adams said 10 students at Chilton County were suspended for three days and two were handed five-day suspensions, the newspaper reported.

One resident, Tabatha Hunt, began a petition to stop the students’ punishment.

“Let’s be honest, the administration is who is at fault here,” wrote Hunt, who said she does not have a child at either school. “If it took them half the morning to realize they had strangers in the school, we have bigger problems than a senior prank. The reality is, the lack of security was exposed and now they want to punish the children.”

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