Last week, Eaglecrest felt the shockwaves of a social media movement. While this is not the first time our school has felt social media’s impact, this one, which went viral for devious reasons, involved heavy theft and destruction of school property. The devious lick went viral on TikTok, but, you may be wondering, what even is a lick?

As Urban Dictionary defines it, a lick is “robbing someone or something.” After a student posted a simple video stealing from their school with a caption about a devious lick, it triggered theft throughout the nation from teenagers – mostly hitting school restrooms. 

“I’m very annoyed because it’s the middle of a pandemic. There’s like no soap to wash your hands with, so I’m frustrated,” senior Roger Lokakao said. “If it’s a brand new soap and they just took it in there and recorded it, I’ll just be really annoyed. Maybe even a little upset because there is not really a reason for it.”

Even in the midst of a pandemic, students are taking soap and even hand sanitizer. More drastically, entire Eaglecrest bathrooms are being shut down. The destruction and disregard of property is entirely different than hiding the projector remote or even taking a box of tissues. One person even tried to flood the West 300s men’s bathroom, which caused more than just inconvenience.

I was in my office, and a teacher asked for the number to security because a student had said, ‘hey, the boys bathroom is being flooded.’ All of the toilets, all of the urinals and all of these things were plugged. And the water was running. So she called security, they came up and locked the bathroom down to do cleanup and mitigation,” English teacher Jessica Fisher said. “When I hear things like that, it’s hard because the nearest like boy’s bathroom is over by the math hall. The nearest girls bathroom is down by World Languages. It’s something we need. We need that facility and when it shuts down, it really messes up the flow of everything.”

The flow of everything, and everyone’s flow, is destroyed when a restroom gets shut down. Since Eaglecrest is already overpopulated, a bathroom getting shut down for a day changes everything.

Eaglecrest faculty try their best to create an environment that everyone can succeed in. The media lab is one such environment – a haven for students that are interested in media or video productions. The technology in that classroom has been accumulated over the course of many school years. One substitute’s faith in the students nearly jeopardized all that has been purchased for students to use. 

“That Friday, there was a sub last period. When Mr. Gabrielli went back to the classroom, the exit sign was gone, the phone was gone, mice and keyboards were gone and the room was trashed,” freshman Casey Callahan said. “The students should replace the stuff they’ve stolen. Depends on what the prank is, but, when it comes to stealing, it is not a prank anymore.”

Students need to be mature enough to realize that a phone is not as black and white as it seems. A phone is a lifeline, and in an emergency, it can save lives. Smartphones can die or not have service, but the phones in classrooms will always work. The world expects teachers to protect their students, but they cannot do that properly if their plan of action in the face of danger is compromised. 

“I think anytime you damage property, from a government perspective, that’s a crime. If I were an administrator here, I would press criminal charges for destruction of property,” social studies teacher Faith Vigil said. “Also, not only the police deal with them, but I think as a school as well. Suspension or something like that is needed because we have nice facilities here. We don’t have extra money to fix stuff that teenage shenanigans cause.”

Unfortunately, this is not only Eaglecrest’s issue. This generation, which thinks it is okay to flood a restroom and commit a felony worth of damage, will soon go into the world as adults. While training youth to be ready to go out into the world does not solely rest on the shoulders of schools, if the school does not teach these people properly that these actions are wrong, the world will suffer immensely. 

“It makes me really start questioning the morals and values that kids are coming into high school with and where that maturity level has dropped. It also makes me question just society in general,” Fisher said. “And it kind of breaks my heart that we can’t seem to understand how that’s just wrong, and not the way to live.”