West Creek High School in Clarksville, Tennessee had a mass suspension on November 19. The reason? Participation in a trending TikTok challenge.
In the popular challenge, set to Nardo Wick’s “Who Want Smoke” ft. 21 Savage, Lil Durk, and more, you pretend your cellphone is a gun and aim it at the camera. The trend frequently takes place in school hallways.
According to Clarksville Now, the challenge was made popular by 17-year-old sophomore Christian Williams. He posted the original video on Thursday evening. It gained almost 500,000 likes on the social media app before Williams made it private.
“I was at school and I was on my phone just going through random Instagram stories,” Williams explained. “I saw the trend on someone’s page and I’m like, ‘Oh, we need to do this, we need to do this. We could probably go viral for this.’”
The next day, the principal called Williams and several other students to the office. Apparently, a parent had called the school about their video. The students were also informed the challenge violated the tudent code of conduct. As punishment, all the students received a suspension. “(The principal) was suspending everybody that was in the video, and it was 50-plus people, because I made two parts to this video,” Williams told Clarksville Now. Some students got only two to three-day suspensions. Williams, however, got five days.
The Incident After the Incident
The story does not end there, however. The Clarksville Police Department paid a visit to the school on Friday afternoon and wanted to talk to the students. One student began to laugh and things soon took a more serious turn.
“I guess it like made one of the officers mad, and he was like, ‘What are you laughing at if you think this is funny,’” Williams said. “And then he was like, ‘Because if I would have seen you on the street pointing an object that looked like a gun, I don’t have time to sit and think about if it is or not, I’m just going to shoot you, and I won’t get charged for it.’” This story has been corroborated by @lexisgambino on Instagram, who allegedly told the same story to the Daily Dot via Instagram DM.
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Written by Justin Acosta
Twitter: @hahalacka
