A Texas high school is facing backlash after administrators told half of the graduating class to put a fork in it and suspended them following what parents say was a "harmless" senior prank.
Approximately 40 seniors at Comfort High School, about 50 miles northwest of San Antonio, received two-week in-school suspensions for a prank that involved placing plastic forks all throughout the football field, NBC affiliate WOAI reported.
"It was a harmless senior prank that all of us parents knew 100 percent what was going on," Hope Jay, who has two seniors at Comfort, told the outlet. "They had planned as a group, you know, 40 students, which is half the senior class… to fork the field, which is putting plastic forks in the dirt."
Jay told WOAI that while many students stuck to forking the field, a smaller group went inside the school and placed things like balloons, Saran wrap and a crooked stag head inside.
Local reporter Morgan Burrell shared photos of the inside of the school to Twitter, and the pictures show a small "for sale" sign stuck on school property, the stag head mounted to the wall of a hallway and a few balloons scattered in what appears to be the cafeteria.
"There's been no damage, no destruction, no graffiti, no defacing of property and no police reports," Jay told WOAI.
Bruce Lott, whose son is the salutatorian, told the outlet that he and other parents take issue with the nature of the blanket punishment, as students who only forked the field and students who went inside the school have received the same penalty.
"There's just no equity to the punishment," he said. "You're looking at your top 10 – you're looking at your valedictorian, your salutatorian, and you're looking at honor society kids. And this was a harmless prank that they were gonna do just kind of as a goodbye, you know, put a fork in us kind of deal."
Shannon Tonroy's daughter is the class valedictorian, she told WOAI. At first, Tonroy said, she thought the suspensions were the school's way of turning the prank back around on them.
"We all actually kind of thought that this was their way of pranking us," she said. "The kids go in and prank them while they turn around and prank the kids. And that would have been absolutely fantastic, a great way to have dealt with it."
Tonroy reportedly owns a local liquor store, and updated her store's sign to read, "Congrats Class of 2021. We're so forking proud!!"
Meanwhile, the hashtag "Free the Forking Seniors" has popped up on social media, including in a Facebook post from local sister Steely Lott.
Lott wrote that the prank took place on May 13, and that the seniors were reprimanded the following Monday. She said that every student involved received a two-week in-school suspension and each were barred from participating in any senior activities.
Comfort High School Principal Darren Williams did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment, nor did Comfort Independent School District Superintendent Tanya Monroe.
This story originally appeared on people.com
