No penalties for early-week Homecoming mischief

Photo courtesy of Eric Hegwer

No disciplinary actions came from the toilet papering shenanigans that caught most of the students’ attention at the start of De Pere High School Homecoming week. 

Staff members are hoping this year’s controversy will bring up thoughts of a more regulated and controlled tradition in future years. 

“Our hope is not to take disciplinary action. Our hope is that we can remedy the situation and have it cleaned up, which is what happened in a very prompt and timely fashion,” said Brian Thielhelm, an assistant principal. “I would say that 90% of the clean up we looked for to happen was done with a very small group in a NEST period.” 

On Sunday, Oct. 6, a large group of De Pere High School seniors came to campus with the plans of toilet papering the entire grounds. According to Thielhelm and assistant principal Ivy Jeskie, students arrived at 11 p.m., and law enforcement arrived around 11:45 p.m. because a neighbor had called the police. 

Kids went running. Police followed and did stop and talk to a number of students that night. The De Pere Police Department ran all the plates of cars left in the parking lot and forwarded the information to the school. 

On Monday, Oct. 7, Jeskie and Thielhelm took that information and looked at the security footage to see what happened. 

Thielhelm sent out an email to the students identified as the culprits and demanded they come to NEST in the auditorium. In the email, he encouraged students who were identified to bring others who were there but got away. 

“(The toilet papering) is never meant to get us in trouble or make a negative impact on the school or make a negative impact on the neighbors,” said senior Marren VanRemortel, one of the student Homecoming advisors. “We are just trying to show our school spirit. I didn’t think it was going to blow up like it did.”

The vice principals went on to say that even though toilet papering the trees is a tradition, the students did not have permission. 

“We are uncertain exactly where that idea came from. It is not a school sponsored event. I don’t ever see it being one here,” said Thielhelm. “We are only in year four of Homecoming, and it is really important that we don’t create an environment where there are loud voices in the community saying this needs to go away again.”

Homecoming faculty adviser Sarah Hardy said that toilet papering is not that big of a deal and it is not hurting anything. 

“It is, in my opinion, a harmless activity,” Hardy said. “There are other schools that do (it), there are other schools that have clean up rules and policies and guidelines. The whole point of Homecoming is to bring our school together, and we try to provide opportunities to do that. Toilet paper is not a school sponsored event, but it is safe. They are not vandalizing, they are not destroying anything. Let them be kids.” 

Jeskie said that the principals know that this is a tradition that likely isn’t stopping; however, they would like to look at procedures in the future to ensure that those who are not involved, such as the custodians, do not have to deal with it. 

“Maybe if we got toilet papered by the seniors, then the tradition is the juniors clean it up,” Jeskie said. “Then the next year they would be seniors and the next juniors would clean it up. It shouldn’t be our staff that works so hard around here that needs to go clean up the mess.” 

Thielhelm said he wants to keep traditions such as hallway decorating, dress up days, and the pep assembly positive. 

“I hope we can create some traditions that are amazing and school sponsored, not having something like this have some unfortunate negative consequences,” he said.