Destructive TikTok trend has hit ‘every middle and high school’ in Beaufort Co.
A national trend encouraging students to video themselves destroying bathrooms and post the footage to TikTok has come to Beaufort County — and other stunts encouraged on the social media platform could lead to assaults on teachers.
The “devious licks” challenge sprouted up on the popular video-sharing app TikTok in September. Waves of students in schools across the country posted videos of themselves with items they’d manage to steal from classrooms, including ceiling tiles, wallets and toilets. In later weeks, students focused on vandalizing bathrooms.
“We have not been immune to it,” said Chad Cox, an executive director and former principal for Beaufort County School District. “We’ve seen it in every middle and high school in the county.”
At most schools, Cox said, the worst offenses have been pouring Crystal Light packets into toilets and pulling soap dispensers off the wall — damage that costs no more than $50 to fix.
But in at least one Beaufort County school, a bathroom counter was destroyed, causing hundreds of dollars of damage.
Cox said that since students post the results online, many of the perpetrators have been identified and are paying for the damage they’ve caused.
Because the district uses a progressive code of conduct that takes into account previous offenses and mitigating circumstances, it’s hard to determine specific consequences for a student who participates. But these destructive pranks could result in suspensions, expulsions and legal liability.
“That range of discipline can be extremely serious, to the highest point our code of conduct would allow, but it almost definitely would involve including law enforcement in an investigation,” Cox said. “You could get charged (by police) and disciplined by the school.”
That’s also the case for the next wave of the trend, which calls for students to “slap a teacher” in October and “jab a breast” in January.
This list of monthly challenges seems to have originated outside TikTok and has primarily spread on Facebook, but it’s already had real consequences in South Carolina.
In Lancaster County, a 10-year-old student at Erwin Elementary is accused of hitting a teacher in the back of the head on Oct. 1. The girl is now facing expulsion following a disciplinary hearing by the school district, the Rock Hill Herald reported.
Police declined to pursue criminal charges or refer her to the Department of Juvenile Justice “based upon the age of the child, the absence of injury to the teacher, and the course of discipline anticipated by the district.”
In Beaufort County, schools have sent emails asking parents to monitor social media use. At Robert Smalls International Academy and Beaufort Middle School, student groups have put together public service announcements addressing bathroom vandalism.
Several schools have tightened policies on students visiting bathrooms, which were already fairly tightly monitored for COVID-19 protocols and contact tracing. Across the district, high schools are monitoring cameras near the bathroom.
At Beaufort High School, high-traffic bathrooms have been shut down, along with bathrooms that required repairs, and teachers are releasing students to the bathroom in phases and by grade level to cut down on hall traffic.
Cox said that anecdotally, he’s noticed a decrease in vandalism since the new policies went into effect.
“We often forget how the kids perceive these ‘devious licks,’” he said. “A majority of kids don’t want these things happening.”