Club room controversy and a crime spree take center stage this issue. This article tells the story of the poster board caper that happened and became unraveled in the three weeks surrounding Globefest. This year Globefest was all fun and games on the surface, as a twist was added, it was made into a completion. But when a completion is made, a dark underbelly of deceit grows beneath it. It all started a week prior to Globefest. The first kidnapping happened on Tuesday, March 31st. A poster board from the past was given to the Community Service club as inspiration for their own Mexico board. That day, the poster board was set inside the workers cubicle and locked up. The next day Michelle Featherston, the Student Activities Secretary, noticed it was gone when she opened up. A little searching revealed it was just moved to the back of the room and mixed in with a bunch of other poster boards. Then just hours later, the poster board went AWOL again. A search team dispersed across the room, searching high and low in every cubicle. The poster board had vanished completely this time.

The next week rolled around, Tuesday, April 7th, the day before Globefest. And the next victim was hit, Thailand. The usual suspects rolled into the club room in the morning, as per routine. One is Victoria Peruski, who is a part of PTK. Right away she noticied her board was missing. She informed Cassandra Fluker, Student Activities Officer, and Ms. Featherston, and another search party was disbanded. Once again they turned up empty handed. When I asked Victoria about her experience she had this to say, “Like seriously? Why would someone want to steal a poster board I worked so hard on? Just to get me out of the competition. So stupid.” Two disappearances now, just days a part, and no leads; It is very discouraging to say the least. Hours pass and besides speculation, shifty eyes and holding on to your poster board like it was your lifeline, everything went back to normal…..until the afternoon rolled around and BOOM! The third poster board went missing! But it wasn’t someone new, no; Mexico had been hit yet again. Hawra Al-Howaishy, President of community Service Club, was bewildered and irritated. When asked how she felt being sabotaged not once, but twice she said some explicit words and, “It’s unfortunate that people feel the need to sabotage other clubs during an event that is supposed to be filled with fun.” Needless to say, that was the last straw. Anyone who still had their poster board in the room evacuated them to a safer location for the time being. No one was taking any more chances. As the saying goes, one occurrence is just an occurrence, two occurrences is a coincidence, but three occurrences is a pattern. A search and seizure was warranted again, but the efforts of finding any missing poster boards were futile. Finger pointing was now at an all-time high, and bit of trust was broken among the clubs. After this third incident I asked Ms. Fluker what she made of all of this, “I just think it’s strange. I can’t believe these kinds of shenanigans would be happening.”

The most baffling conundrum of it all was that the poster boards for sure never left the room. No one was ever seen walking out with them, so they still had to be in the room. But where? That was the question I, Hawra and Inayah Rahman asked ourselves a week after Globefest on Friday, April 17th. The room was empty except for the three of us just sitting around, bouncing ideas off each other about what could have happened. Then I finally threw my idea into the mix, like a jr Scooby doo detective. I said, “If the poster boards never left the room, then they had to stash them somewhere no one would think to look and couldn’t find without looking for it. There is a space between the foldout cubicle walls and the actual wall. You can slip stuff back there if you wanted to.” Hawra wasted no time climbing up on a cubicle desk and peering behind. Our faces all dropped and lit up when she said, “Guys, I see poster boards back here.” I knew it, but I still couldn’t believe it. We found all of them back there and few that no one had mentioned were also tucked away in the dark crease. We set them up on display and called both Ms. Fluker and Ms. Featherston into the room and watched as their astonished faces laid eyes on the stolen goods. Ms. Featherston’s only words were, “I was very sorry this happened in the first place, and although we can use the poster boards in the future, it’s still bad that the people who worked so hard had to suffer this.”
So this poster board caper has been solved thanks to us meddling kids, and our undying devotion to discover the truth. But one mystery still remains, who did it? A person in the competition or just a practical joker? I do have an alternate theory though. See my other article in this issue, Ghoul in the School: Is the Club Room Haunted?