Vandalism: Athletic Center's Sign Missing Letters

DAN KATZ '08

Those of you who happened to walk by the entrance to the new athletic center may have noticed a change in the design of the entrance. At first glance I missed the alteration, due to the fact that our school has experienced significant architectural changes lately. However, the change jumped out at me during my second stroll past the entrance on Monday, March 3. The sign above the new building's main door, usually reading "Athletic Center," now reads "Athl__ic Center." Two of the letters (the 'E' and the 'T') are currently missing from the sign. The reasoning behind this alteration is not clear at this moment, but we at "The Beaver Reader" assume it to be a result of some sort of vandalism. While I hope for another explanation, I currently sit disappointed. Such vandalism shows a complete disrespect for the school's recent advancements, specifically the $10m project that is the new Athletic Center.

The Reader's own Maddy Kiefer met with Assistant Athletic Director Matt Thompson today, who confirmed our vandalism theory. Thompson said that the missing letters had to be the result of vandalism, as the letters where made of steel and screwed onto the metal backing of the sign. He also added that the administration is not positive when the vandalism took place.

After doing our own research, we talked to students who remember seeing the letters late last week. "Last week i walked up and i definitely saw the letters. They were right there!" notes senior Sabrina Fiori, who noticed the missing letters on Monday (3/3).

The administration sent out an e-mail to teachers asking for any helpful information, but so far little progress has been made in the search for the culprit.
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Fun Day!!!!!!!!!!!

TAYLOR HAIGLER ’08 AND MADDY KIEFER ‘08

In retrospect, we probably should have realized this was not going to be an average Monday. First off, the teachers were all wearing jeans and sweatshirts, which is normally only allowed on casual Fridays, and the student council was gathered in the balcony during meeting. No one really noticed this, however. We were too preoccupied with the anticipation of our new courses.

Students came to school expecting to receive the exams that they failed, grudgingly start third term classes and get hours and hours of homework. But to everyone’s excitement, IT WAS FUN DAY!!!

Before this was revealed, we sat in suspense while Mr. Manning lamented the loss of his ‘stolen strawberries’ and the punishment that the perpetrator would suffer. After Clay Marsh ‘09 and Sam O’Reilly ’09 were interrogated and snitched on Michael Manning ‘09, Peter Wilmot ’08 informed the student body that it was all a hoax. Instead of reluctantly beginning our third term classes, we were treated to 45 minutes of BAGELS and CAPRI SUNS and then shuttled to Quincy and Somerville for 3 hours of INTENSE CANDLE PIN BOWLING. We enjoyed the funtivities while eating BAG LUNCHES and drinking WATER! We returned to school to watch the faculty TRUMP the seniors in a volleyball match, but they fought hard. Overall, it was a great start to senior slump… I mean… spring term.
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The Mysteries of Beaver: The Sketchy YouTube Video

MADDY KIEFER ‘08

At about 7:00pm last Tuesday, I went to the Beaver Reader website to read the college essay of the day but immediately noticed that something was different. Instead of the normal video player on the home page, there was a different video. There was a bright purple frame around the player, as opposed to the typical blue one, and in it there was a picture of a woman. Curious, I went to the YouTube link that was provided under the frame to see what the video was.

It took me about ten seconds to decide that the link to that video was not supposed to be on the Beaver Reader site. It was basically six minutes of French techno music by the artist “TenDanC'IouS RecorD,” very different from the videos of the talent show or dodgeball games that are typically on the site. Google searches turn up virtually nothing, except for a couple MySpace pages that may or may not be related to the artist. After a minute or so of complete confusion, I remembered something that happened to Dan Katz ’08 a few weeks previously. On a Sunday in mid January, he noticed the exact same video on the main page. He told Jessica Penzias ’08 about it, and she saw it on the site too. Just as Dan was about to log on and take it down, Jessica pressed refresh on her browser and video was gone; the page was back to normal.

As soon I remembered this story, I went back to the newspaper to try and take a screen cap of it to show other people, so we could get down to the bottom of this problem. But, similar to what happened to Dan and Jessica, the video was gone as soon as I got back to site. It’s interesting to note that the user just joined YouTube and posted the video two weeks ago—right around the time Dan first saw it. (Also note Dan’s comment on the video: “who are you, and why does your video come up on my website in place of another video?”)

This is definitely not one of my conventional mystery articles—for starters, it barely has any affiliation to Beaver, except that the video was on Beaver’s newspaper site. However, we would like to get as much information about this glitch as possible, so if you have seen this malfunction before, please leave a comment below. Also, if you see it in the future, try to take a screen cap of the page (for Macs press Apple+Shift+3, for PCs press “Print Screen” and paste it into a Paint document) and email it to someone on the newspaper staff.

UPDATE: OK, thanks to the unparalleled investigative journalism talents of the TBR crew, we now have a screen capture of the home page while "possessed":


We have some ideas about why this may be happening, and we'll continue to look into it. Stay tuned!
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