It takes a serious offense for a student to get kicked out of a school, sometimes even bordering on criminal. But that's not always the case, as some students catch a bad break and have to deal with an overreaction from a teacher and school board. Basically, no one is immune to expulsion, so if you’re a student reading this, take note and use these stories as cautionary tales.
1. Punched His Own Ticket
Dude smuggled in a wine bottle. How did the teachers find out? Well, the brass knuckles he was carrying in the backpack broke the bottle and spilled wine in the middle of the classroom.
2. Inflammable Means Flammable?
Very weird kid in my year came into school with huge amounts of hairspray in his hair, the amount where your hair eventually sticks like gel but without actually using any. Guy that sat behind him in one of our classes happened to be one of the worst behaved kids in the school and he proceeded to get out his lighter and light the kid’s hair on fire.
It didn’t go up like if it were oil but it definitely stayed lit long enough to see him running out the door with his hair smoking. Both kids were gone after that.
3. Next Level Jerk
He stole an autistic kid’s backpack full of books, took a crap in it, zipped it shut, and shook it up. He then bragged about it to one of his friends, so when the autistic kid freaked out, it didn’t take long for the administration to figure out who did it. It was one of the most psychotic things I've heard of. The kid was an idiot. He was constantly getting caught doing stupid stuff, had multiple breaking and entering charges, was in and out of juvenile detention, etc.
Shortly after getting expelled, he broke into a community building, vandalized the place, and stole a bunch of stuff. He was already on probation—again. He got tried as an adult and ended up doing prison time.
4. Easier Ways to Cook an Egg
This “kid”—18 years of age—opened the window, leaned over, pulled a lighter out of his pocket and lit a bird nest that was just sitting there on fire. For apparently no reason. Smoke started getting into the building and everybody panicked because the janitors just kept saying there was a fire in a classroom and we rushed outside.
It turned out to be nothing serious but that wasn't the wisest decision.
5. An Explosive Way to Go
Some kid in my elementary school got expelled for dropping fireworks through the mail slot in the front door of the school and blowing the glass out of it. Elementary school…
6. Follow the Breadcrumbs
A kid escaped school on a Gordon food service truck during recess. When they got back to their little warehouse, while unloading the truck, they found him hiding in the uncrustable sandwich box.
7. Battle of the Intellects
He pushed a kid into a bookcase and knocked down the whole row of books. All this over an airplane engineering book.
8. A Dope Business Model
Two kids were dealing drugs out of their lockers. It was actually a pretty good plan. One had a locker upstairs and the other's locker was downstairs. Everyone who bought drugs knew the combinations. People were told which locker had their merch and when you had class on that floor you'd get a hall pass and stop by the locker. A teacher got suspicious after seeing multiple kids going to the same locker.
I will never forget being in class and getting the lockdown announcement while drug dogs were brought in, and seeing one of the kids FLYING down the hallway toward his locker.
9. You Get What You Deserve
Back in the sixth grade, there was a kid who I will call Jon. Now Jon, I think, had some undiagnosed psychiatric issues that would cause him to just explode in frustration, but he was otherwise a nice kid We both had a science teacher who was just an insufferable jerk. He would make it a habit to antagonize and mock kids who he didn’t like—and one day, he went too far.
That day, during some downtime, Jon was asking the teacher for help with something. The teacher said something rude like, “There isn’t enough time in this life to help you.” Jon obviously freaks out, yanks the jerk teacher’s personal iMac G3—it was blue—off the desk and throws it out of the third story window and it crashes against the pavement.
Freaking karma, man.
10. Words Have Consequences
They made a nonsense bucket list—steal a pencil, make a paper airplane, etc., with the final task being, "Kill Sally Johnson." Poor taste in a joke. They threw the list in the garbage and someone found it. The police came and Sally was asked if she felt intimidated by the student in question. Obviously, she said yes, and the student is never seen again.
11. So Many Crimes Committed
This dummy broke into someone's house, stole their guns, and then got busted trying to sell them to an undercover cop. He got expelled and arrested.
12. Inside Job
A kid in my sister’s class called in a bomb threat to the school....from the school cafeteria payphone. This was in 1999, so before everyone had cell phones. He was arrested and expelled.
13. Serious Situation
One kid came into the school and shot a bunch of students with a BB gun. He was a pretty troubled kid. Later on, he ended up going to the same high school as me, did the same kind of stupid stuff, dropped out in grade 11, and I didn’t know what happened to him for many years—when I found out, though, I couldn't believe what I heard. Apparently, he’s gotten his act together, by the sounds of it. He owns his own construction company and dropped the drugs.
He seems to be doing all right.
14. Full Moon
My brother got expelled for the most hilarious thing I've ever heard: He mooned the teacher in the middle of class. I almost did too, for figuring out how to open the console on our locked-down computers and running a command that made "I'm Rick James!" pop up on every screen in the school during standardized tests.
15. That’s Not a Knife…
It was honestly one of the scariest days of my life. He stole a butcher knife from the cafeteria kitchen and attacked a teacher with it. They tried to subdue him—this was the era before school resource officers/school shootings—and someone pulled the fire alarm. We all evacuated the building. In the ensuing scuffle with the principal, he dropped the butcher knife but grabbed all the plastic knives and forks from the cafeteria.
He ran outside to where we were standing and threw them at us. Since they were cheap plastic, nobody got hurt. He was eventually tackled by the gym teacher and principal then carted away in an ambulance. The kid never came back to school. The school also decided that banning plastic knives and forks would prevent this incident from happening again, so they replaced all plastic silverware with sporks—which is the real tragedy.
The kid did get the mental help he needed and has gone on to be a productive member of society.
16. Mad Pooper
He would poop in a bag and stick it in someone’s backpack. He did this twice. The first time he was given a warning and got suspended. The second time he got expelled. This was in the ninth grade.
17. Unfairly Treated
I am from the Midwest and this happened in the mid-90s. A middle schooler went bird hunting over the weekend, so he still had shotgun shells in his coat jacket on Monday. No weapon, just the shells. When he got to school he realized the shells were there and immediately turned them into the principal. He was suspended from classes until the board made their decision and he was eventually expelled.
This kid made an honest mistake, did the right thing to correct the mistake, and was punished to the maximum for it.
18. It’s Getting Hot in Here
He crushed a canister of pepper spray with pliers until it exploded. They evacuated the entire school and shutdown that wing of the school for three days until the city and the school district cleared it safe for use. If I remember correctly, it hospitalized one student for a few days and earned the guy some juvie time and hefty fines.
That area of the school smelled like old fish and bleach for weeks afterward.
19. What Goes Around Comes Around
Released 500 crickets into our school cafeteria, then preceded to sit back and watch the madness. The resource officer caught as many as he could and ended up putting them in the perpetrator's car via an open window. He had the last laugh.
20. Stronger Than Febreze
The kid sprayed bear spray all over the boy’s bathroom. It spread through the halls and more than 20 to 30 people got it in their eyes and mouth and had trouble breathing, including some of my best friends, who had to go home because they couldn’t breathe
21. Would You Look at the Time
He threw a clock at a teacher. His name was Ethan and this happened in my math class at the end of the day. The teacher was a short angry guy—think bagel boss guy who’s good at math. Ethan was tall—this is relevant. Ethan was also 18 and, due to family stuff, he had moved out of his parents' house and was renting a room from a friend’s parents. I know this because we were friends.
Ethan was texting in class, so the teacher took his phone. A few minutes later, Ethan is still not paying attention, so the teacher kicks him out. He needed his phone for work—I think he was a pizza delivery driver—and asked for it back. The teacher said, “No, your parent or guardian can come pick it up later.” Ethan brought up that he was 18 and didn’t live with his parents and didn’t even speak to them.
The teacher wouldn’t budge, so Ethan came up with the greatest response. He took the clock off the wall and said, “I’m confiscating this. Your parent or guardian can come pick it up later.” The teacher tells him to put it back and starts walking over to him. Ethan merely holds it just out of the teacher's reach. The teacher could have probably jumped up and gotten it, but he knew better.
The bell rang signifying the end of the school day. I stuck around just to see what would happen. It turned into a bigger argument, and the teacher called for security but because it was the end of the day the security guards were all busy. During this time, Ethan gets more impatient, yells at the teacher that he’s putting his job at risk, which puts his housing at risk.
It’s the end of the day and he’s a legal adult. Ethan brings up that he can be sent away to die in a war so he should be able to get his phone back. The teacher refuses, probably out of pride at this point and not because of any real rules. The teacher starts yelling at Ethan, so Ethan throws the clock and it nails the teacher in the forehead. The security guards eventually show up and Ethan’s taken out of the school.
He did get his phone back, but he got expelled, or at least placed on home bound. He was due to graduate in a few weeks and had decent grades, so while he couldn’t walk at graduation, he at least got his degree. The following year, a student fell asleep in that teacher’s class. The teacher shook the desk, and it caused the kid to chip a tooth.
He got two months suspension—no idea if it was paid or not—and had to go to anger management. My sister ended up having him four years after I did and as far as I know, he still teaches, although this happened a decade ago.
22. A Future in Comedy
This is a good one. One of the teachers in my high school was born without his right arm from the elbow down. He was the new English teacher, pretty young, good looking and whatnot. We also had another new female teacher come in that year who was quite attractive. If you’ve ever heard of the movie Teeth, it’s about this girl with teeth in her vagina.
Anyway, some kid photoshopped both of their faces onto the movie poster and made it say, “Mr. Blank didn’t always have one arm.” The picture got around quite fast, and I went to catholic school so this was a big no no. The kid was super smart, too. What a shame.
23. Luck of the Draw
My friend left his BB gun and pocketknife in his backpack by accident. The police did a random search of certain classrooms that day and his room was picked. Quite frankly, when I found out, I was not surprised that he was expelled—the shocking part was that he hadn't been expelled already! After all, he'd been caught for marijuana possession and setting off fireworks in the middle of the amphitheater.
24. It’s Raining Eggs
A kid and his friend egged the school from an airplane. It was crazy. The one guy's dad had a Cessna or something with a private strip in the middle of a field. One night, they went to the egg farm next door and stole a bunch of eggs, then took off in the airplane in the middle of the night. Apparently, they did manage to drop eggs around the school.
But early in the morning the fog set in and they couldn't find their way back to the landing strip. They ended up flying very low around town, which, post-9/11, freaked everybody out. One of the hotels was evacuated. Eventually, they were arrested and expelled from school for it, but I think it took a while to figure out what happened.
25. A Young Drew Barrymore
She was pissed that she had to move schools so she set her new one on fire. She snuck out of the school during lunch with some matches and set one of the trees in the nearby bushland on fire, which spread to the science block and then the English block. Firefighters were called and we evacuated and got sent to the gym.
She didn't try to hide it. She bragged about it until one student eventually dobbed her in and then she was gone.
26. Stop, Hammer Time!
He threw a hammer at a student, narrowly missing another student and lodging it in the wall. They'd been tossing plastic cutlery at him and he'd had enough. Honestly, they were poking a sleeping bear, because he'd made it clear from the day he arrived that he had some sort of mental condition that made him a compulsive liar, but in the terrifying way.
Like, he told me directly about how he murdered his own mother—a lady who regularly dropped him off at school so duh, a lie—with a screwdriver. People at my school were very, very dumb, but he got expelled immediately.
27. A Child’s Play Thing
A kid in my high school had an airsoft gun in his truck on the one day of the year that my school decided to perform a “modified lockdown,” which is really just a different way of saying, “we're searching your stuff for drugs.” He gets called outside to unlock his car so that the police can further analyze this obviously fake, see-through plastic toy gun, and what do they do?
“Pay day fellas, we got exactly what we were looking for!” Poor kid got expelled. I will never forget sitting in chemistry with the windows open at the front of the school when he drove by in his truck screaming “SCREW [high school's name]!” His adopted mom was a seventh-grade teacher. Doesn't really mean anything, but just an interesting bit of information.
28. Smile, You’re on Candid Camera!
I went to an all-guys’ Catholic high school. One of the teachers was trying to become a deacon or something and had to videotape himself hosting a service. He taught religion, so he used a class period to take his students to the chapel and record his service. He had to go back to the classroom for something and one of the kids got up and began desecrating everything.
Mock blowjobs of the candles, humping the crucifix, fake sermons, the whole nine yards. The kid returns to his seat before the teacher gets back and all the students don't say anything. Unfortunately, the camera was rolling the whole time…
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29. Not a Laughing Matter
Okay, so we were in the middle of class that took place on the fifth floor of our school and there was this kid who, in the middle of class, stands up, goes to the window, proceeds to open it and then jumps out. The entire class watches in terror and the teacher just stands there for a second in disbelief of what she had just witnessed.
In reality, the kid jumped onto a ledge under the window as some sick prank to make us think he just committed suicide. He got expelled the following week and we had to listen to our counselor for a week talk about why stuff like this isn't funny and why suicide is bad. This was not the only reason he got expelled, though.
This was just the final straw that forced the school to expel him. He was known for fooling around a lot and pranking the teachers all the time and doing dangerous stuff like starting fires in the middle of the class and similar stuff.
30. Worth Every Penny
This is a weird one. I will preface this by saying this kid was on borrowed time. He had a history of being a jerk but was a really funny kid. So, it's early junior year and it's lunchtime. Two people jokingly say to “Kevin” that they will pay him $60 to pee his pants. Money talks so he stands up from his seat and within minutes pees his pants.
They record the event and the video is passed around the school. Maybe a day or two later, he gets called down to the office and is promptly expelled for whatever reason. The kicker here is that the two kids never paid up the money until the disciplinarian committee forced them to pay “Kevin” instead of getting detention.
31. Scared Straight
I stole a laptop freshman year of high school for no damn reason, bragged about it, and then all my friends snitched on me. I nearly pooped my pants when the cops called my home. I then hid the laptop miles from my house, got arrested the next day at school in front of everyone and then proceeded to lead the police on a wild goose chase as to where I hid the laptop.
It all ended when the cops driving me around, bringing me to juvie, and saying I was staying there the night if I didn't tell them where the laptop was. I told them where it was. I had a pretty rough family life at the time.
32. One Hell of a Story
I wrote a horror story and that's really all that I did. There was no warning before that or anything. Columbine had just happened and this was a few months later. Worse, I didn't even want to write the thing but a friend pressured me and it was his own mother that got me kicked out. This was at a small private Christian school.
I also wasn't allowed to talk to my friends anymore since the police were involved. Later on, we met up at a reunion and everyone admitted that they were affected by my sudden disappearance. I became a legend. I was the one that vanished. Also, I guess I got really cool before I suddenly went away for no reason and the school kept it real hush hush.
33. Part of the Process
I wasn't expelled, but I was part of the panel that resulted in the expulsion of an international student. At my specific university, academic dishonesty cases were handled by fellow students, so undergrads would sit on cases involving undergrads, and graduate students on cases involving graduate students. This case was between a student and their chemistry professor.
The professor alleged that the student didn't complete their lab report, and instead forged the professor’s signature for credit. During the trial, the student defended their assertions that this was not the case at all. However, as part of their defense, it came to light that the student in question practiced writing the signature of their professor in their notes.
The student's defense was that this was a hobby—they liked replicating signatures of people, including this professor and celebrities. Needless to say, we didn't believe this and ended up expelling the student. I didn't vote for expulsion, rather for a lighter penalty of suspension or probation. This case's outcome was exceptionally severe, as my university had only expelled about 35 students in the previous couple of decades for academic dishonesty reasons.
For this student, it probably had a massive impact on their life, as their student visa was tied to their attendance at a university. I'm not sure of the final outcome, as students can appeal the initial decision.
34. Moving Down the Line
I got expelled from high school my junior year. I was ditching class a lot and doing drugs and stuff—not a good time in my life—and the public school I was attending kind of knew something was up but obviously had no idea what, how could they? This was my first year at a public high school and there were tons of kids so it was easy to go unnoticed.
Come to school high, leave classes to go eat and smoke and do dumb stuff, blah, blah, blah. One day, me and a friend come back from ditching a class, and I had actually just quit smoking weed but had some left and my buddy still smoked so I guess they saw us come back onto the parking lot and grabbed us as we tried to get back to class, supposedly just for ditching.
However, they smelled my friend and wanted to search my car. I told them no, so they called my mom and I don’t know why but she said yes and they found my leftover weed—like 7g—some Adderall, that I would actually use to study, funny enough, and my pocket knife. They found my Xanax too, but didn't think it was important and threw it out.
Cops are funny—they think Adderall is worth pressing charges over but not the Xanax. I digress, the knife made everything worse because it was on school property and they assumed I was a drug dealer. I’m pretty sure my buddy ended up snitching on me, and I'm pretty sure we were in that situation to begin with because someone else told on us for ditching, but nonetheless I got expelled and we both got correctional school for the next semester or whatever, which was actually pretty dope.
To be honest, high school was a messed up time for me but it worked out. I got my diploma and I don't do drugs anymore, other than weed, but I don't really consider it a drug. I don't drink, alcohol is much more mind-altering for me to be honest. That's my story.
35. Everything Looks Familiar
I unintentionally got another student expelled. We were critiquing websites we had built when I noticed one that looked exactly like mine with a few tweaks. I popped open the source and noticed it was a line for line copy of my code with a few changes to the CSS. I brought it up to the professor to protect myself in case he noticed them, though I doubt I would have been suspected, mine was more cohesive.
The changes he did make didn't make the site appealing. Anyway, apparently it was his third time plagiarizing and after the second time you go “on trial” with the school. If you don't get expelled after that, then a third time is the nail in the coffin.
36. Part-Time Student
My roommate got expelled for basically never going to class, not even when there was an important exam. He spent all night smoking weed—with me—and playing video games—not with me—and then slept all day until about 5 PM. Like, I would wake up, go to my 8:30 lecture, get lunch, go to my lab from 2 to 5, then come back to my room and my roommate was STILL sleeping!
I found out the following summer that he had gotten a letter from the university asking him not to come back. Last I heard of him, he had enrolled at a commuter school, where he made the dean's list.
37. Good Idea at the Time
I sent emails to the teachers that I didn't like from the principal’s e-mail address saying they were fired.
38. School Waterfall
Okay, so this is a story about my dad. My dad managed to get expelled from school at the tender age of 15. Why? He and a buddy decided to pull a prank on random students by filling up a bunch of garbage cans with water and setting them up at the top of the main stairwell of the school. When the bell rang, everybody started heading up the stairs, and my dad and his buddy tipped the garbage cans over and washed everybody down the stairs.
I'm not really clear on how he got caught, but he got kicked out shortly after that.
39. Security System Needs an Upgrade
I gained administrator access to my school's email system. I found that when I used a different version of the client software at home, I could see the number of characters in a password when I viewed the properties of an account. I found an account with administrator rights and no password. If you deleted a user's password, then any password they input would work, so I could use other people's accounts undetected.
We had announcements read over the intercom each morning. The secretary would compile them and the dean would read them. I could use any account, so when the announcement email was sent, I unsent it, modified it, and resent it. It was honestly the funniest thing I've ever done. A girl I liked had just broken up with her boyfriend for cheating on her—he had gotten head in the bathroom. I added, “Congratulations to [names redacted] for all your hard work in the bathroom on Wednesday” to the rolling announcements.
This was a very small school—only 80 to 100 kids per grade—so nearly every student knew what it meant. When it was read out loud, laughter erupted in my class, and I could hear it coming from nearby classes as well. I also got sports teams out early and modified and forged notes to parents about friends. After two weeks, I was ratted out by a kid who was sending porn and was promptly expelled. They didn't know about the security flaw, so they didn't fix it.
I knew it was my fault for thinking I was some sort of hacker, but I was really pissed off afterward, especially at the administrator and the dean who worked very hard to make sure I was kicked out—so I set about getting my revenge. I canceled the administrator's new auto insurance policy. Then, I found a note from the dean to her friends where she talked about getting blackout drunk after eating tacos and getting a jeweled genital piercing.
I forwarded it to everyone. She then became known as "taco sparkle," and was taunted relentlessly. She quit at the end of the school year. I feel bad about it now, but it still makes for a pretty good story.
40. Going the Extra Mile
I've got a decent story about someone else. After I got expelled, I joined a self-study diploma program. There was a kid there who called himself "Squall" and dressed a lot like the character from Final Fantasy VIII. He was a pathological liar. He would tell stories about how he was a world-class surfer or the head of a kendo dojo.
He had a big scar on his arm that looked like he broke it, and he said he was in a kendo tournament on the Great Wall of China and he had been stabbed by a flaming sword. A doctor had replaced the bone with titanium, and he had cybernetics controlling it. I never called him out on his lies because I found them kind of entertaining, so even though he was annoying, I let him follow me around.
Anyway, one day, another kid in class did call him out. I guess he figured he could prove he was a kendo master if he brought in his sword—that turned out to be a terrible mistake. So, the next day, he brings in this cheesy katana with a dragon emblazoned on it that he'd obviously bought at comic-con. The teacher throws a fit and tells him to get out. The police were called, but by the time they got there, he'd already gotten on a city bus.
As he walked home from the bus, he was carrying the sword, wrapped in a blanket, over his shoulder like a rifle, and he walked by an elementary school. Tensions were high, as there had already been two school shootings in San Diego earlier that year. The police were called again, and the school was evacuated. He ran through the neighborhood and hid the sword in a trashcan.
The police caught him and found the sword. He said he bought it as a birthday gift for his dad. I only know that part because it made the paper. He wasn't allowed back to the diploma program.
41. A Weapon Against Food Maybe
I brought a can opener to school. Even though I had no prior record of any misbehavior, I was expelled. I didn't like the lunches they served on certain days at my middle school, so I decided to bring a can of Chef Boyardee. I didn't think much of it, so I opened the can in plain view. I guess the administrator thought the can opener was a weapon from a distance.
Regardless of whether she was right or wrong, the other administrators seemed to support my expulsion for bringing a "weapon" to school. My parents were poor, didn't speak English, and weren't active members of the PTA, so they were really helpless. America in the early 90s…
42. Sign of the Times
I got expelled from my college during my freshman year. I bought a gram of weed off a friend one night just to smoke a bowl before bed. Next day, I'm in class and I get around 10 missed calls and messages. Of course, I'm thinking, “Aw yeah Mr. Popular right here.” Nope, my friends were freaking out because there were campus cops and RAs in my room searching through all my stuff.
When I was in class, my roommate smoked in our dorm and left to go to the beach. An RA smelled weed and illegally entered my dorm. They called the cops and they found my weed. I got expelled for .92 grams of weed. That’s some trash right there. My roommate, the one who was actually smoking weed and the reason this all happened, was placed on academic probation for a month.
43. Handle With Care
In the canyons near our housing, there were a lot of old World War II ordnances from when it was a proving ground. Lots of people collected the mostly harmless dummy ordnances—but nobody expected the tragedy that was coming. However, some kids found a mortar round and it blew up while they were playing catch with it. Two of the three kids died. So, the alarm went off to turn in whatever you had.
They found some really impressive collections. The Fire Department and Army EOD came to our school to show us some examples of what we could come across. As we sat in the bleachers of the gym, this kid stands up, holding what appeared to be a shiny aluminum softball and asked if it was anything. The EOD guys froze and we all had to evacuate.
It turned out to be from a cluster bomb. I never saw that kid again.
44. Cheat Sheet
High School. Senior Year. He was the stereotypical computer geek with a pocket protector kind of kid. Very smart, generally quiet, and was nice but awkward. But on that particular day, he became a school legend. He somehow found a way to access the part of the school's storage network where teachers could save their files. He made copies of thousands of quizzes, tests, answer keys, etc.
A lot of them were from his AP U.S. History teacher, but I was told he had stuff from most teachers. He sold copies of answer keys and exams to kids until someone finally told the school administrators. They contacted the police, and one day while he was at school they went to his house with a warrant and confiscated his computers. They arrested him when he came home.
The teachers were pissed. Every compromised test had to be remade. It led to hundreds of hours of work for his history teacher, who had to remake all his lesson materials for the year over again. They threatened him with the possibility of being prosecuted as an adult. They claimed that each file was its own felony, so he was looking at thousands of charges.
This was ultimately just to get a plea deal, which was something like a lot of community service, expulsion from that school, and probation. I think if he made it through probation it would all end up sealed or something.
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