9/16/05, Union Springs, NY – Some may have called it monkeying around, but school officials didn't find the stunt amusing. A 17-year-old student was arrested Monday after streaking through his high school wearing only a gorilla mask and outrunning the school principal. The student said he had been dared by friends to streak through the school, according to police.
Union Springs High School Principal Kimberle Ward — who said she runs three to five miles a day — couldn't catch the fleeing student, but she was able to help police identify the teen after watching a hallway surveillance camera video and interviewing students.
[What did she identify? This sounds like a scene from "Porky's!" – Ed.]
"There's no way anyone in the district would consider this a prank," said District Superintendent Linda Rice. "We're here to teach children, and we do have high standards."
The student, whose name was withheld by police and school officials, was charged with exposure, a violation punishable by up to 15 days in jail and a $250 fine.
This story first appeared in the Syracuse Post Standard
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE…
“HORRORS! OUR SCHOOLS ARE VULNERABLE TO NUDE ATTACK!”
9/19/05 - Why does it always take a teenage streaker in a gorilla mask to snap people out of their complacency?
Many of you scoffed when I warned last month that public nudity was a national emergency in the making. Well, who's the big dumb ape now? Barely a month after four topless middle-aged women were arrested outside a coffee shop in Moravia, public nudity has returned to Cayuga County.
A Union Springs High School student was arrested last week for allegedly running through the school covered by only a gorilla mask. No one who was there will soon recover from the graphic sight of a panicked, naked ape-boy fleeing a professional educator through New York state wine country.
The frightening part is it can happen again. In a three-hour investigation last week, I discovered that Union Springs isn't the only area high school vulnerable to an attack of student nudity. Of the half-dozen or so schools I contacted, none conduct anti-streaker preparedness training or awareness programs.
In some instances, student dress codes fail to address the problem of not wearing any clothes at all.
It's tempting, of course, to dismiss the latest wave of indecency as a Cayuga County problem, but history reveals public nudity knows no borders. About five years ago, two students wearing only ski masks and tennis shoes disrupted a pep assembly at Paul V. Moore High School in Central Square. They were nabbed - in a law enforcement sense - after their getaway driver abandoned them, and suspended for a year.
"We have high standards for our kids," said Dr. Walter Doherty, the principal at Central Square High School. "We don't tolerate that."
But are high standards any substitute for a massive binder of FEMA-style readiness procedures? For example, most districts fail to spell out whether administrators, many of whom suffer from astronomically high blood pressure and gout, should run after youthful student streakers.
Westhill Principal Greg Avellino said his first instinct would be to investigate. "I had knee surgery last year.”
Corcoran High Principal Brian Nolan said he'd be laughing too hard to give chase, and would instead identify a masked nudist by consulting other kids. "Kids are the biggest rats in the world," he said approvingly.
Perhaps the best argument against a high-speed pursuit is that many students want nothing more than to see their principal try to chase a naked gorilla person.
"They're not laughing at the kid with the gorilla mask on," Chupalia said. "They're laughing at the principal chasing the kid with the gorilla mask on."
Wise words for a troubling new era.
By Jeff Kramer, Humor Columnist on Yahoo.com. Reprinted with permission.
