Many students were surprised to hear principal Paul Robinson’s announcement on Oct. 10 that a student’s car had been vandalized. He said a $500 reward would be offered for information about the incident.

Robinson said the vandals had scratched the doors and punctured the tires of a senior girl’s car. The administration did not release the student’s name or the names of any suspects, and no arrests have been made.

As soon as the student detected the keying of her car, she contacted Robinson to make a police report. The administrators and counselors interviewed suspected students after other students volunteered information. The information has been turned over to the sheriff's deputies. 

According to Robinson, the vandalism was a case of mistaken identity, so the person or persons who did the vandalism were targeting a particular student, but hit the wrong car.

This stirred up a lot of confusion for the student and her family.

“She was so scared and mystified in all this because she had no idea why somebody would do something like this to her,” Robinson said.

Some students met with their counselors or directly approached Robinson to discuss what they knew about the incident. But currently, there is not enough information to charge any suspects, so nobody has received the $500 reward.

Robinson appreciated the selflessness of the students who provided information.

“What was really great was that some students who came forward and talked about [the incident] actually said, ‘We feel so bad for the student that we don’t want the reward. If anybody should get it, [the victim] should get it,’” Robinson said.

Robinson added that the school is not a place where vandalism should occur.

“I think that it is really important for all of our students to know that anytime somebody has something close to this happen to them, it impacts us all,” Robinson said.

The keying of the car was not the only vandalism to occur on campus—there was also the image of male genetalia sprayed on the grass in the quad with what plant operations supervisor Brian Moran assumed to be salt crystals or chlorine. It took place over the last weekend of September.

Moran learned about the grass vandalism on the same day Robinson made the announcement of the car vandalism. The maintenance team took immediate action to clean up the mess.  

“We initially vacuumed up all of the salt crystals or chlorine on the grass and we scrubbed what looked like an outline,” Moran said. “We watered it thoroughly, mowed it and sprayed it with green paint, thinking that it will help blend it in.”

After their attempts to make the vandalism inconspicuous, the maintenance team was surprised to find the stain even more prominent than before.

“As time has gone along, the grass within the whole thing died so its a big brown patch right now,” Moran said. “I was thinking within three or four days the grass would come back, fill in those areas and you wouldn’t be able to know it, but it just got worse and worse.”

Without wasting time, the maintenance team is solving the current issue at hand.

“Our next step is to thatch the area that was burned, put some soil and reseed that area to regenerate the grass,” Moran said.