Seventy-five students banned from prom after police called in to deal with ‘pranks’
What started out at Laval Senior Academy as a day of high jinks among the students to mark the end of another school year, turned into a dark chapter for up to 75 students – with lasting consequences.
End-of-year fun
While end-of-year pranking has become somewhat of a tradition at LSA – and there are videos of the goings-on in past years posted on the web attesting to it – 2023 is likely to be remembered as the year things went more than a little too far.
Within days of the June 9 incident, to which the Laval Police – decked out in crowd control gear – had to be summoned, a letter was sent out by the school administrators to LSA parents in an attempt to set the record straight.
Harmless fun?
The letter maintained that among the pranks played by the students were “stink bombs, paint, water guns, and graffiti on school premises,” and that “regrettably, these pranks escalated beyond the boundaries of harmless fun,” the letter stated.
A quick scan of the internet reveals that several videos of the last day of school at LSA have been posted for the years 2022 and 2023 – with this year’s possibly being the wildest.
In the 2023 version, which we found posted on TikTok, LSA students can clearly be seen setting off smoke bombs, while a phalanx of LPD officers in riot gear are shown arriving at the scene as they prepare to be deployed for an intervention.
Uninvited from the prom
In the aftermath of it all, at least one student at Laval Senior Academy said that she and some of her classmates were unfairly banned from the LSA end-of-year prom as a consequence of what happened.
According to a media report, that was just one of several disciplinary actions imposed by the school administration after the day of pranks got out of hand and the police had to be called.
LSA student Ava Wolfson told CTV Montreal last week that everything had started out innocently enough, while suggesting they never meant for it to get out of control.
‘Tradition for the last day’
“It’s like a tradition for the last day of school to always have a harmless water gun fight with paint, basically,” she told the broadcaster. “It’s fun, it’s not meant to hurt anybody.”
She said things “progressively got worse and worse with smoke bombs, and someone put one off inside school. After that happened, it wasn’t fun anymore.”
While acknowledging that she herself had handled some spray paint, she insisted she only sprayed paint at classmates outside the Souvenir Blvd. school, but didn’t engage in vandalizing property.
Her father, Perrin Wolfson, later recounted receiving a call after the incident from the administration of the school.
Among the pranks, say LSA administrators, were stink bombs, paint, water guns and graffiti on school premises
75 students banned
He said the principal, Nathalie Rollin, had claimed Ava, along with 75 other students, were being banned from the prom because of their involvement in the pranking, which took place as the students were bursting with nearly uncontrollable enthusiasm with the summer holiday looming.
“I’m a disciplinarian,” he told CTV. “If we were having to pay restitution for something she did, if she defaced school property, if she had lit a flare in the school … if she was having criminal charges pressed against her … they wouldn’t need to tell me not to send her to prom. She wouldn’t be going to prom.”
Last week, he and his daughter were still hoping that she and the others would be able to go to the prom, although the school’s principal later clarified in an e-mail that they would be refused entry if they turned up.
