Background
Night before graduation, after the last dance. We all went upstairs for room check - and Ms. Lynch yelled at the girls for not standing exactly in the door frames - as usual. After room check was finished, we were all expecting to go downstairs (as had been done every year since the g school was founded) for one last goodbye and to finish signing yearbooks. (This usually went on until 2 in the morning, and then everyone would go back upstairs for a second room check, and then lights out would be at 3.) However, Kit Alewine happened to be on duty that night, and he decided that he would rather sleep than let us say our last goodbyes - and although Lynch tried to bargain with him and take his duty, he still refused. So, naturally, everyone was furious....and drunk...and some (like 1/2 of the student body) was also high. Well, about a week earlier, the RLC's had given us goody bags in our mailboxes as end of the year gifts that contained miniature popcorn bags (none of which anybody actually ate). S.Z. had tried to cook his that night, but left it in as long as a regular bag (which it specifically said not to do) and had caused a fire alarm with the smoke from the burnt popcorn when he opened the microwave. See where this is heading?
The rimms of the story
Well, people were mad and drunk and they got to talking about how to get out of the building (since everyone normally feels trapped there anyway, and now it had just gotten a lot worse). A junior girl, JM, called G.I. (a senior guy) and some other people asking if they would put popcorn in the microwave to set off the alarm and finding that they had been thinking about it/already done it (btw JM was completely smashed at this point and asked based on the urging of most of the girls of 3rd floor, who at this point had gotten in enough trouble to get them kicked out of school if there was one more incident they caused). Others in the suite were completely smashed...and one person mentioned that it would be funny if all of the floors did that and the fire alarms all went off at the same time, but no one would do it. Finally, two girls OL and CC from 3rd floor hall decided to take a bag and put it in the microwave, and set it on 20 mins. And, as it turns out, the other 2 guys hall and the second floor girls hall (at least 2nd floor girls claimed they did) had done the exact same thing at the exact same time. I don’t exactly know how the setting off of the alarms at the exact same time came to be, but I think what happened was that the guys had synchronized their bags. On my hall (the other girls hall didn’t do it), several people had decided to cook some last govie night ramen, and one girl (AA) thought that the popcorn smell was really gross, so she took the bag out before it got burnt really bad. This was discovered by one of the drunk suite girls CT when she went to cook ramen and turned it back on with the original starter OL. However, at that time, something happened and all the alarms went off. The RAs and RLCs knew what had happened and they were furious. We went outside for the fire drill, but it was crazy wild. People were singing ‘I’m Leaving On A Jet Plane’, and yelling f**k you to the RAs - and several people were so drunk that they couldn’t stand up. (Allot of people got "clean the mini bus" duty for the next morning cause there were no chances left to give out 8:00's.) Even old govies MT and JY drove by drunk to see the late night festivities and were swiftly accompanied off campus by the local Hartsville PD. The guys yelled “THANK YOU LADIES” in unison due to a rumor going around that the alarms started on the girl’s side (it was later found that all the alarms except the 3rd floor girls went off at the same time. The 3rd floors didn’t due to AA’s decision to turn off the microwave and by the time it was turned back on it was too late). The male RA’s quickly shut them up and threatened write ups. Finally most of the RA’s on both sides snapped and told us they would write us up if we didn’t stop going crazy. After awhile we were allowed back into the building. The RA’s had taken out all the microwaves from the lounges and tossed them into the lobby into a big pile. It smelt like burnt popcorn. Most people stayed up late after that signing yearbooks and discussing the events, as many students were talked to by RA’s (OL from earlier was written up for back talking an RA as well as other things but was not called into question about the actual incident).
You guessed it. Onto the 'good news and not so good news' Murray met us all in the morning after our senior picture with his "I have some good news and some bad news," speech, which is the only time where he finds it inappropriate to smile. He said the good news was that we were having graduation, but the bad news was that we almost didn’t. Then, during the rest of the morning preparations, he spent a lot of time trying to get people to rat out who had done it - but no one talked. (I was a prime suspect...imagine that.) What's funny, though, OL confessed, but Murray told her to her face that he didn’t believe that she could have done it, and sent her back to graduation and continued to try to get L.B. (of the drunk suite) to rat CB (who had been babysitting a bunch of the drunk people) out for doing it (and one of their old roommates) as well as tell her she was pretty much kicked out if she didn’t. She told the truth, that she wasn’t involved and neither were the other people he mentioned. Most people were furious. LB was originally punished but LB’s parents were there when Brockman originally asked her to talk/rat out people so a few legal threats on Mr. and Mrs. B’s part later everything was smoothed out. Whew...this has been a long story...but it doesn’t end there: finally, admin continued to "investigate" the matter up until SSP, but the cameras didn’t point into the lounges at that time (which is where the microwaves were). Since they never came up with the culprits, they simply banned the microwaves. Admin continually overreacts, and then is given what they deserve, and then overreacts again.
CASE STATUS: Closed
Reported by HaMM