Stealing from school is the new tiktok trend

Hearing my biology teacher on the verge of tears because things SHE PAID FOR were stolen and now we can’t do certain labs anymore was so sad.

Stealing from public schools is like robbing a homeless person

Here eight months later to say that this trend caused the boys in my school to start just generally vandalizing their bathrooms to the point that they had one bathroom for use for the entire third trimester; the girls still had bathroom privileges because we weren’t stupid.

I remember being in like grade 3 and seeing my teacher use liquid whiteout and I was like "teachers have smol bottles of paint on their desks?? :0" so I stole it and was never caught. I felt very cool. Then I cried myself to sleep for a few nights bc I felt guilty but was too afraid to tell anybody.

The interesting thing is, I'm a public high schooler. Our school is known as one of the "good ones", but we're still really underfunded and often short on materials. We had a (home) football game against a private boarding school where half the kids are millionaires, and this morning half of everything was gone. Soap and hand sanitizer dispensers, eyewash stations, music stands, 2/3rds of the balls, even the urinal dividers. I'm pro-sticking it to the administration, but it's not rebellious when it's kids with an Olympic size pools in their backyards stealing soccer balls from a public school.

The thing is, people can get hurt. The second I heard that the bathrooms closed and that kid said "Idk, hold it in, ig" I got stuck on that. For some people with medical issues, like myself with one kidney, or others with other issues like that or if you just think of the fact that girls get periods, having no access to a bathroom could be very bad. I can't hold my pee in for too long because of my issue so I'd be one of the people who would have pissed herself before third period. Not to mention how many girls would be bleeding through their underwear. Targeting bathrooms is selfishness amplified, in my opinion. It's something that is necessary for many people and for many people it's honestly one of the only places they feel safe in at school. We cannot hold in certain bodily fluids as a goddamn human animal and to deny that access is friggin' inhumane.

The teacher going "I'm actually pro vandalism" is WILD and I can only respect it

There's literally a group chat in my school for people to organise what started as devious licks but is currently "making sure they only steal stuff that's not funded by the teachers" and i dont know how to feel about it...

This trend just feels really... Uncomfortable? Like, personally I'm not laughing about it. Even on a normal basis it feels wrong to have to shut down bathrooms or limit bathroom usage, let alone during a pandemic in which we're all supposed to wash our hands super often... Outside of that, maybe I'm just a goody-two-shoes but stealing anything from a school feels wrong, let alone all these "big" items and not, say, an expo marker. I don't know, feels weird and gross. Hope it ends soon.

The safety scissors one actually pissed me off, because there’s a good chance the teacher bought that with their own money. It’s sinful how much of a teacher’s supplies they have to pay for themselves, especially with Joe underpaid they are.

The books, craft supplies, fidget toys, and games in my classroom are things I bought for my students out of my own pocket. I'd be PISSED if kids were stealing those things. Teachers have been through quite enough.

They should give these kids an opportunity to give back the items with no punishment. It may not be as satisfying as punishing them, however, it will get the items back more often than not and prevent having to use more of the teacher's salaries to pay for replacing these items.

My school has been targeted by a couple of sophomores for this trend and it honestly isn't funny. Maybe the TikTok will be funny but this actually affects people. They broke some bathroom essentials and sanitization stands that we NEED to stay healthy during these times. Stole some signs too. And my principal, the sweetest lady you could have ever asked for, had to send out a heartbreaking message to all of us that our school has essentially been vandalized. There are only 3 custodians for the entire school and they had to clean up the mess those kids left behind, not to mention that the damage will take away funding for clubs from the students. Doing this isn't an act of comedy, but an act of pure heartlessness and a lack of empathy for literally everyone around you.

Everyone's talking about teachers and how it affects them, but the custodians are probably being hurt by this too. Now they have to clean up after this, they're the ones that will potentially have to repair the damages depending on if the school has the funding for a repair/handy man or not. Custodians are already treated horribly, please don't make their job harder than it already is.

At my old middle school there were no licks instead people spray painted the R-slur and the N-slur and the T-slur on the bathroom wall. So the bathrooms were always closed. This was mainly done by boys and they’d even sneak in to the girls bathroom and do this! I’m so done!

Man, the only things I stole were art supplies so I could continuously work on my sketchbook. My art teacher literally saw me gather a handful of colors and then pointed out the watercolor pencils I had missed. Cool guy.

That middle school teacher who is torn brings up an excellent point and I think the line is somewhere around "Who does this effect?" Cause if it directly impacts your classmates, the teachers, and the education process, you aren't really sticking it to the man like you think you are. Making no one able to go to the bathroom isn't anti-establishment, it just means people who are already sick of the school (probably for the same reasons you are if classrooms are underfunded, the administration has screwed up priorities etc.) have to suffer more

I'm an electrician, and one of my main concerns watching this is that a lot of the things being stolen would be pretty risky for an untrained highschooler to disconnect. Big commercial buildings like schools often use 277V circuits for lighting and emergency and such. Some kid's gonna get himself burned, shocked, or even electrocuted. 120V stuff is of course dangerous as well, but 277/480V can make a really big boom if you don't know what you're doing.

Worst prank I ever performed in high school was drawing a little bird with a sombrero and the word "tequilla" at lunch time every time we had a Spanish class in the afternoon. Every time without fail our Spanish teacher would have this incredulous little argument with herself like "that wouldn't even be right, that would be pronounced "tek-ee-ya", not "tek-ila", before erasing it. Kids these days are truly devious

My school actually banned us all bathroom access because someone stole a handdryer twice (the second time was the last straw because they set the bathroom on fire also for some reason), I remember passing by these staff workers and asking what happened. I was told "The sweet little angels here stole a handdryer", and I cannot tell you enough how sarcastically sweet she sounded.