Beyond traffic cones: are student pranks going too far?
Think back to Freshers Week and you will probably recall some instance where you woke to find various items uprooted from the street and placed in corridors around your halls. Whilst this is commonplace amongst students and is a way of displaying great pride in the most random object obtained, those participating in this harmless fun are being blamed for a spate of mysterious thefts occurring on streets around Britain which are being linked to students' drunken antics.
As the popularity of the internet auction site eBay increases and with many students looking for ingenious ways to make a quick buck, items such as street signs, traffic cones and even pillar boxes are being targeted by this new breed of entrepreneur. Various iconic 'British' items can actually fetch a high price, with the old style red phone boxes reaching anything in excess of £2,000 to some foreign buyers.
Whilst many students would question their capability to discretely remove such large items from their university towns, a recent article in the BBC News Magazine highlighted how the now infamous Welsh town of Llanddewi-Brefi is becoming a target for its street signs, given its rise to popularity in 'Little Britain'.
Hunting for street signs is hardly a new craze, as music fans, particularly those following the Beatles, often made off with Penny Lane and Abbey Road street signs to add to their collections of memorabilia during the 1960s.
However jovial and innocent these drunken pranks might appear, though, there is a more serious side to the matter, particularly from the point of view of the police and Highways Agency. Not only do the theft of road signs lead to confusion amongst drivers, people who manage to steal manhole covers to sell for scrap metal probably fail to realise how they are actually endangering the lives of many pedestrians and cyclists. In China, for example, it has been known for people to be killed by falling down exposed drains.
Having recently turned 21 over Christmas, a friend of mine decided that a pub chalkboard which was advertising live sport and tickets for their New Year's Eve party would make the ideal 'rite of passage'. After managing to put both me and the chalkboard into the back of a taxi (and feeling that this was somehow the best present ever), it was the next morning that I regretted taking such a large and heavy item. Needless to say, what seemed like a great idea at the time soon descended into ways of trying to get rid of this fairly useless item now sitting in my living room, and my parents threatening to make me return it was not a solution I wanted to agree with.
It would seem that the stealing of bollards, cones and other miscellaneous items is something that will remain quite synonymous with the drunken student. The thrill of obtaining something unusual and feeling a great sense of pride in this, appears to be the motivation for many students (and adults in general!).
There is no evidence to suggest that these pranksters are responsible for the removal of phone boxes, but so long as students remain light hearted and fairly innocent in their street trophy escapades (and don't start using heavy machinery to remove objects) then it can only be seen as a bit of harmless fun.
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