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Gimme a P-U-N-K-D! Teen Tricks Rivals into Self-Mockery

by Jordan Yerman | August 30, 2007 at 12:03 pm

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I'm not entirely sure why this guy was suspended: nobody forced the fans from the rival school to hold up their signs: if anything, it's an excellent object lesson in what happens when you blindly follow arbitrary instructions from strangers.

A high school student who tricked football fans from a crosstown rival school into holding up squares of construction paper at a stadium that together spelled out, "We Suck,'' was suspended for the prank, students said.

Kyle Garchar, a senior at Hilliard Davidson High School in suburban Columbus, said he spent about 20 hours over three days plotting the trick, which was captured on video and posted on the video-sharing Web site YouTube.

Garchar said he was inspired by a similar prank pulled by Yale students in 2004, when Harvard fans were duped into holding up cards with the same message.

At the end of the video, Garchar wryly thanks the 800 parents, staff and alumni from Hillard Darby High School who raised the cards at the start of the third quarter during last Friday's game played at Crew Stadium, home of Columbus' Major League Soccer team.

"It couldn't have been done without you,'' reads the closing frame of the video, which had been viewed more than 4,400 times by Thursday.