Every single school has a scandal. Some of them are truly grotesque and horrifying examples of true crime that make the news cycle, while others feel like a ramped up comedic plot arc from Dazed and Confused.
Regardless of how big or small, if you look down the annals of history far enough, every school has a scandal, and sharing these with others is one of the best ways to describe the culture you grew up in.
In a recent Reddit thread, commenters shared the big school scandals from their home towns, and some of these may give you nightmares.
1. MGrego's school lost a man no one will miss.
"The Assistant Principal died in a car accident. There was a big, somber school assembly in his honor."
"His wife said a few words, and then his 14-year-old daughter came to the microphone to say a few words. She sort of snapped and unloaded about how he was not a good guy, he was a monster who had been abusing her and her little sisters and using them for kiddie porn for years - and she was glad he was dead.
I've never heard a room full of people grow so silent, so fast."
2. sagittariisXII' school had a student who won a lawsuit.
"My school district gave all high school students laptops that they could bring home with them to use for school work. They could also remotely activate the webcams and spy on students (although of course they didn't tell us this). One kid got caught smoking weed this way while he was in his room at home and I think was going to get suspended. He sued the district in response for invasion of privacy and won the case. It got national media attention for a little while."
3. Permanenceisall's school's favorite teacher was a bonified perv.
"Everyone’s favorite teacher was in fact banging that student he always hung out with, who would sit in his lap and would visit him after she graduated. They could not have been anymore obvious."
"Edit: For everyone asking this was a performing arts high school in San Diego, from about 2005-2008.
Edit: I don’t know if this is allowed but here’s a link with pertinent info. She got a $1.25 Million settlement because no one acted."
4. TheSethsation witnessed a shady woman in the system.
"My high school districts's superintendent hired a relative who wasn't qualified for the job, increased the salary of administrators every year, used the district's credit card to buy meals, groceries, gas, personal electronics, and gift cards. When the state audit went through they said that the overpay of administrators and the personal spending cost the school district around 1.1 million dollars. Her husband was also an administrator."
"When she eventually got caught, she just retired and for some reason never faced federal charges. When she retired she had a $260,518 salary. My favorite part is that the state audit discovered that the district's credit card was used to purchase logging equipment the same month the superintendent's husband filed paperwork to open a timber company. Everyone knew there was corruption in the school district, but no audits or investigations happened until someone was threatened by the superintendent's husband on Facebook."
5. Zack_A_Ryan's jr high had an orgy.
"In the eight grade, there was an orgy in the bathroom. An orgy. In eight grade. At school. They got busted after teachers heard them moaning. They all got suspended."
6. The39Steps' school had a compelling and horifying true crime scenario on their hands.
"A year after I graduated HS, a woman was stabbed 40+ times with a pair of scissors while jogging on our track on a Sunday. One of the guys in that year’s senior class wound up hanging around the track over the following days, obsessively pestering investigators with questions and theories, so naturally some suspicion fell on him. When the woman’s description of her assailant (she survived!) matched him spot-on, he was arrested, and both the scissors used and his bloody clothes were found at his house. Dude was sentenced to 10+ years in prison."
"End of story, right?
Wrong. Two years after the trial, the jailed kid is ordered released after his little brother, one year younger and a dead lookalike for his big bro, is popped for violent sexual assault on a woman, and confesses to the stabbing during questioning. Turns out the older brother took the fall for him, falsely confessing so that he could keep his younger sib out of jail. Dude never told anyone, but did admit the lie after his younger brother’s arrest and confession."
"I knew both kids when I was a student there. Both brothers were definitely thought to be weirdly intense, but their behavior was attributed to their military dad’s strict style of parenting, and not anything darker."
7. Sweener253's school has two teachers who found love and lost love.
"My highschool Guidance counselor fucked a science teachers wife and everyone knew about it. They got a divorce. Both teachers still work at the same school to this day, and students will never ever let it go. The story has been handed down from year to year."
8. SoapSilly watched a teacher deliver a baby.
"One ninth grader broke water on her field trip and one of the teachers had to help deliver the baby."
9. Iwantcaaaake's school was not a safe place for girls.
"The caretaker killed two local girls and hid them in the school, he tried using the clay kiln to burn them. He later dumped them a few miles away."
10. SingTheDoomSong's school had a full on soap opera on their hands.
"I went to a small Christian high school that also had a middle and elementary school on the grounds. The principal of the high school had a child that was in my grade. One day he comes over the intercom and announces that he's stepping down from his position."
"He then goes on to talk about how he and the female gym coach had been having an 'emotional affair' for the last few months. This announcement goes through every speaker in all three schools. I remember everyone in my class looking over at his daughter who had a look a complete surprise on her face. From what I gathered this was the first time she was hearing about all of this."
"Shortly after the gym teacher also left her position, but the most interesting part? The gym teacher had no idea this was going on. She was just doing her job and thought she was friends with everyone. The principal read more into their relationship and decided to go to the church with it and they made this decision. The gym teacher left her job out of shame and had to spend a lot of time explaining to her husband what exactly was going on."
"EDIT: Adding information that others have asked about. The gym teacher's husband took a little time to realize that there was no actual affair that went on. After that they rumors and gossip in the area got to be too much and he ended up getting a different job pretty far away and moved them both to start fresh."
"The principal and his wife got a divorce within a day or so of the announcement. The wife got custody of all three kids, plus I think eventually their house and a fair amount of money. The former principal took a job selling either cars or furniture, I can't remember which, and pretty much faded from the radar. I don't think his eldest daughter had anything to do with him after all of that. I wanna say that she intentionally made sure he stayed away from her wedding."
11. yellowskies2393 saw a popular guy go down.
"A very popular guy at my school was arrested for videotaping people using the restroom. He was 18. They were not."
12. ichkilldich's school had a major loss.
"A girl died in the pool during an event at the school, the swim teacher was blamed and was prosecuted. The girl who died was at my sister's class, both were 7 at the time. That happened over 10 years ago, but the parents haven't had another child since, she was their only kid."
13. dc12343's principal was getting bread.
"The assistant principal was embezzling money. It promptly started a hashtag."
14. disco_thief's school became a meme.
"My high school had some fights that for some reason managed to make the local news, and the principal’s words about it were broadcasted as well. She was pissed, and talked loudly in a passive aggressive manner over the announcements the next morning, repeating our school’s mission statement over and over, ending the broadcast with “record THAT!”
“Record that” became a bit of a meme around the school after that, and the school seems to have lightened up about the situation since because the journalism team’s shirts have “RECORD THAT” written across the back."
15. Someone at abstract_noun's enacted revenge porn.
"Someone spread photos of naked female students which forced some of them to drop out."
16. needforscreeb's school had some not-so-bright potheads.
"5 or so guys got caught smoking synthetic weed (the kind that utterly reeks and WILL fuck you up internally) in the school toilet right next to the biology rooms, where the biology teacher had just got out of being a drug officer in the MET."
"When asked if they smoked cannabis in the toilets, apparently one of them (he was new to the school and didn't speak much English) said "no, I only smoked weed".
17. DackJaniels007 went to a school with multiple creep teachers.
"We had two teachers arrested for secretly recording kids in separate incidents. Our wood shop teacher had a low angle camera on the floor pointing up towards the seats, and also would slide an iPad out from under his desk when girls would walk up to it. He let a student borrow his flash drive, who found the evidence."
"Then our speech teacher was caught hiding a camera underneath the sink in one of the private bathrooms that special education used..."
18. billbapapa's school had a teacher who committed suicide after his pedophilia came out.
"Someone spray painted "_____ is a kiddy diddler, ask ____" on the wall of the school. Everyone saw it when they showed up. The teacher was nowhere to be found that day. The girl was also no where to be found."
"I remember it was a Friday, cause the day was crazy with people talking about it, but it sort of died down on the weekend. Monday we find out the guy killed himself that weekend. Later, talking to the girl, sadly it was very true. Others came forward later. It was a pretty shitty situation."
Kiddy Diddler = Child Molester
~30 years ago
"Girl miraculously seemed normalish after. I think she was hella strong.
I didn't actually know any of the other girls who came forward, or don't remember knowing them."
19. G0ffrey's school was full of terror.
"Two things,
We had a bomb threat and the teachers would not tell us who sent it until the school paper leaked it and for the rest of the year admin and the paper had a back and forth power battle."
Not our school but our sister school, the principal of that school got fired because he was found in a hotel room with a dead hooker on the bed and a mountain of coke on the desk
20. irishamerican's school had a fatal goth phase.
"In my senior year, a group of friends (who were Goth before Goth was really a thing) experienced a tragedy when one of the friends accidentally killed the other. The friend who caused the accident took his life a few weeks later. This touched off a wave of suicides at my school, 5 in total, over the next 3 months."
21. Whi7ee's brother's friend was a genius.
"Someone created a fake facebook profile for our principle. He was commenting realistically on teachers pages but the context never lined up "nice to see you last weekend Ms. Brown".
"Then once he had everyone as friends, he started subtley roasting kids hahaha
(He accessed the account from the computer lab and was never caught.) He was my friends brother"
22. realultralord's classmate went to jail for a threat.
"Some guy jokingly wrote "If I won't get a B for this I'm going on a rampage." on his english test. fast forward 15 minutes, a police response unit of twelve stormed the classroom and fucking arrested the shit out of him (without being brutal, but it still was quite frightening for deterrence reasons I guess)"