The infamous TikTok trend of stealing odd objects from schools has hit Hereford High when students tried to steal a urinal from the boy’s bathroom. I guess you could call this a “devious leak” as a pipe ended up bursting and flooding the hallway during second period. 

The trend has been around for a few weeks now and each video I see just gets weirder and weirder. The first time I heard about the trend, my friend in homeroom showed me one that he just saw, and it was someone stealing a microscope from their science department. 

After that, I got countless occurrences of people stealing fire alarms, bags of parmesan cheese from the cafeteria, and endless amounts of soap dispensers that were smuggled out of schools. However, the one that left me in the most shock was watching someone walk up to their school at night holding a master key.  

 The last thing I expected was that someone at Hereford would try the trend. I thought it was just a plumbing issue that had to be fixed, until Principal Joe Jira sent out one of his famous emails telling parents to speak to their kids about the repercussions that would be taken if someone tried to pull off this trend again.  

This trend has reached schools as far as Texas, where it got so out of hand that they had to partially shutdown the bathrooms. TikTok has even associated the term “devious licks” as something that goes against their guidelines because it promotes violent behavior (The ‘devious licks’ TikTok challenge has students stealing toilets and vandalize bathrooms – CNN). 

So, many schools and even the platform itself that started this trend are outraged with how students are so easily influenced by this social media challenge. It’s surprising that students in high school are impressionable enough to do this, but we are high school students who think we are invincible.  

In the span of my three years at Hereford High, this is the second time students have vandalized the boy’s bathroom. My freshman year, the boy’s bathrooms had to be shut down due to ceiling tiles being broken and stall doors being graffitied. I guess being away from school for so long made students forget how badly that ended for the students involved. 

What happened in that bathroom to make it go through so much abuse? 

The trend is obviously something students should avoid because no matter what, you are most likely going to be caught, especially with cameras all around the school and bathroom sign-up sheets that keep track of when students are in the bathroom. 

Personally, the trend for me is starting to lose its comedy and is just getting sort of stupid. That “in awe” feeling of people stealing such obscure things is starting to wear off. So, what comes next? 

I have seen people starting to do “angelic licks” which is when they replace the stolen things in bathrooms, and that is a lot better to see than people stealing fire alarms. I would not be upset if the whole trend came to a stop and something new and less incriminating replaced it. I mean come on, there are so many more funny things that happen in high school that a student can film and get viral from. Just think of all the things that happen in our home football games alone.