MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - A high school prankster who damaged school property in Vermont is finally paying the price - and then some - just in time for his 25th reunion.
As a Montpelier High School senior, Michael Burzycki painted and stitched together tarps to create a 60-by-16-foot banner that read “LIVE LONG AND PROSPER CLASS OF 1994.” He and a classmate lugged it up to the school’s roof and triumphantly hung it up outside the auditorium. But water bottles they used to weigh down the corners ended up breaking a window.
Principal Peter Clarke didn’t punish him. Instead he handed him a bill for $1,994, due at Burzycki’s 25th reunion.
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“We love you and we’ll miss you,” Clarke told graduates. “And Michael, here’s your bill for the window.”
Burzycki told WPTZ-TV that he has the money to pay the bill, but wanted to do more, so he started a GoFundMe page for the school that had raised an additional $5,075 as of Sunday.
“I broke it, I bought it,” he said. “That’s the way it should work.”
In his fundraising pitch, Burzycki described himself as a quiet kid who usually went unnoticed.
“Over my high school years I had a developed a reputation for being studious, responsible, and diligent - a true Breakfast-Club-Anthony-Michael-Hall-type,” he wrote. “But late in my senior year I decided to test the limits of what I could get away with because, quite frankly, I knew that no one expected it of me.”
He told WPTZ-TV he wouldn’t pull such a prank today, but offered advice to today’s students, telling them to recognize their actions have consequences.
“Take risks, but take smart risks,” he said.
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Information from: WPTZ-TV, http://www.thechamplainchannel.com
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