Rector ‘flips’ after speech and debate prank

The plan was simple. Get a teacher to unlock his room, then create complete chaos.

The speech and debate team’s two-year tradition to pull an April Fool’s prank on English teacher and former speech and debate coach Erick Rector was born in 2013, when the team hatched a plan to flip all the desks in his classroom upside down.

To begin, Class of 2015 alumna Anjali Manghnani suggested in the team’s Facebook group chat that they sabotage Rector’s room. Manghnani was close to her coach and would frequently pull small pranks on him, but she had never attempted anything of this magnitude.

“Daily, it [used to be] things like stealing his chair or hiding his keys, but [this] April Fool’s Day tradition was always pretty interesting,” Manghnani said.

This particular prank was fairly elaborate. Manghnani and several upperclassmen met a few nights before the prank to discuss their plan of attack, and on the day of the prank, they led more than 20 accomplices into battle.

Right after the lunch bell rang, the team asked English teacher Carolyn Bohls to unlock Rector’s  room and distract him on his way to the cafeteria during lunch.

Once in the classroom, the team had less than five minutes to turn all the desks over and leave Rector’s room before he arrived to his desk.

They finished on time, and about 10 minutes later, their shocked coached chuckled uncertainly as he entered his classroom. The team, which had been hiding around the science wing, emerged and exploded in giggles, unabashedly proud of its glorious prank.

Since lunchtime was almost over, Rector was unable to clean up the mess before third period, so he made his third-period class do it. Little did Rector know that the fun was not over: The team would strike again the following year.

On April 1, 2014, the team found Bohls again to unlock Rector’s door during lunch. They rushed in to gather his desks and bring them outside, and then barricaded Rector from the room.

Part of the team dragged his couch off to the side of the English wing, facing the back parking lot, while most of the team created a pyramid desks in front of his classroom.

Upon seeing his team’s handiwork, Rector was aghast.

“I thought, ‘Oh my god. How am I  going to get these back inside the classroom?’” Rector said. “And then it was, ‘I’m not going to do it, who’s going to do it for me?’ I had some students [get the couch] back for me.”

Manghnani said the pranks the team played on Rector were all in good fun.

“It’s always just a [good] way to remind Mr. Rector that we appreciate him and to mess around with our favorite coach,” Manghnani said.