Condom hoax has Florida parents irate
Star news services
KansasCity.com
June 5, 2008
Brooksville, Fla. – Hernando High School phones have been ringing off the hook with irate calls from parents who received an unusually sly prank letter in the mail.
The letters, according to a report this week by Hernando Today, a publication of the Tampa Tribune, state that sex education classes will no longer be offered at the school. Enclosed in each was a condom and encouragement for parents to “take on the responsibility of teaching their children about safe sex.”
The buzz is that it”™s a senior class prank.
The letters “” which were printed on official school letterhead and stamped with the school”™s automated postage machine “” were sent to parents of sophomores at the school, using address labels taken from the school”™s computer database.
Principal Betty Harper said administrators launched an investigation immediately upon hearing from parents last Friday, when the letters began arriving in mailboxes.
“We are extremely upset and concerned that something like (this) went out on old letterhead and is disrupting the community in the way that it has,” she said. “We do apologize to the community and anyone who has received those letters.”
The letter retains a serious tone and fictitious contact names “” all thinly veiled sexual innuendoes “” and invites parents to call the school and ask for them.
It reads: “After numerous years of educating students about the principles of benefits of abstinence we have found it to be unsuccessful. Our very own Little Leopard Land is overflowing with little leopard cubs. Obviously, our attempts have proved futile. Let”™s be honest, ALL of our students are sexually active.”
Harper said she thinks many parents took the letter seriously, until they read the last paragraph containing the fictitious names, including “secretary Miss Ivanna Humpalot.”
“We will proceed with disciplinary measures once our investigation is complete,” Harper said. Some students said it was a prank organized by members of the graduating class.
Sophomore Chris Nyholm, 16, said he had heard about the prank when it was in discussion stages, but didn”™t realize the seniors had gone through with it.
“They actually stole that prank off a radio show,” Nyholm added. “It wasn”™t very original.”
image: American Madness