It would be interesting to see how children react to people wearing suits vs. not and see if there are like genetically embedded reactions suit vs. no suit.

Story time!

My high school has a tradition where in the last week of classes, the graduation class gets to take over the school for one day. Basically, the entire class gets the freedom to organize a show to thank / mock the teachers and to reminisce about the six years of spending there.

Usually, this started off with locking up the school and throwing water balloons at people who dared to enter until they ran out of balloons. Then, everyone is gathered inside the main hall and the teachers are playfully mocked for what they've done wrong in the past six years for an hour or two. It's often a show with a theme - in my first year the graduates did a Judge Judy style of show. Second year did an Oscars-style show, giving awards for the best (and worst) teachers in different categories.

My graduation year wanted to turn things up to eleven though. We chose 'school is prison' as a theme. So on the day itself, we gathered the teachers behind the school, put them in prison jumpers and had them walk to the school 'chained'.

Thing is though, we wanted to dress up as prison guards, but also wanted to look cool, so we asked every graduate to dress up in black suit & tie, wearing dark sunglasses and keeping a poker face at all times. We oozed authority. Me and three friends stood on the roof of the school (illegally), to imply that you're always watched in our new totalitarian regime.

As a result, the rest of the students acted very...submissive? They would go out of their way immediately. When a group of juniors got a bit rowdy, one of the guards escorted him to the back of the school 'for his mischievous behaviour'. The rest of the group was scared shitless because of that. Especially the freshmen were very impressed/scared by our look. If it weren't for the suits and serious looks, they would've never listened to us.

That day probably crossed some lines (the takeover day is now much more strictly regulated because of this and other things we did that day) but 'twas interesting nonetheless.