Every Friday from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm, I designate time in my busy schedule to view the hit NBC show, American Ninja Warrior. On this show, contestants compete to climb Mount Midoriyama, a mountain composed of assorted physical challenges, for a prize of $500,000. As I watched a rerun of the second part of the Denver qualifying challenge that originally aired last October, I noticed something quite peculiar about the popular program: there were no Georgetown Day School contestants on the show. Now, there are only two ways that this atrocity could have come to pass; either by the
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With the publication of Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury, the public received a window into the administration of Donald Trump. It shocked readers, and gave a wild insight into how the nation is run. The young journalists at The Augur Bit were inspired to do the same: this is our tell-all article exposing the secrets of the administration of the Georgetown Day High School. Relying on hidden microphones and unnamed sources, we journalists are providing our trusted readers with information we think the public needs to know. The details, in the opinion of this journalist, are truly shocking.
Throughout history, humankind has been challenged by a number of age-old questions. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Why do bad things happen to good people? Is there a God? But no question is as trivial, as controversial, or as provoking as to whether a hot dog should be classified as a sandwich. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines a sandwich as: “two or more slices of bread or a split roll having a filling in between.” On the surface, it seems that Merriam-Webster would consider hot dogs to be sandwiches, as they are classically served as a grilled cylindrical piece
On March 12th, 2017, Russell Shaw emailed GDS parents saying that middle school history teacher and high school coach Mark Allen-Gifford had been arrested the previous day for sexual misconduct against a student. Hours later, C.A. Pilling emailed high school students, relaying the same news. Within a week, news sources like WJLA, NBC4 Washington, WTOP and the Washington Post all broke the updated story: the eighth-grade teacher was detained for meeting a 14-year-old girl outside of school “several times,” talking about sex with her, kissing her, and allegedly touching her thigh. Even one year later, the GDS community, and the
On November 10, Open Spaces were brought to the GDS high-school, facilitated by members of GDS’s student and faculty community. And while it may seem that these conversations are in the distant past, they will be returning twice more over the course of the remaining school year. Open Space discussions are defined as “a self-organizing practice of inner discipline and collective activity, which releases the inherent creativity and leadership in people. By inviting people to take responsibility for what they care about, Open Space establishes a marketplace of inquiry, reflection, and learning, bringing out the best in both individuals and
On Wednesday, January 31, the entire freshman class and their parents congregated in the Georgetown Day School library. This mandatory meeting was organized to discuss the usage of drugs and alcohol in the 9th grade class. Amy Killy, the GDS guidance counselor, believes that the main goal of the meeting was to get students and parents talking about this issue. She hopes, “that there can be some sort of common ground that can foster a good conversation about what’s real, that is both real and relevant.” In previous years, meetings similar to these have occurred for the sophomores and juniors.
As she was walking to class, freshman Marleigh Ausbrooks did something pretty normal for any GDS student: she took an elevator. She piled in with a few fellow students and headed up to the third floor. Ausbrooks recalls the scene: “the crowd started to get on the elevator and a few people decided to just take the stairs. I decided to cram in with another girl from my French class.” As the elevator began to move, Ausbrooks immediately sensed that something was wrong. “As soon as we got on the elevator seemed to start to move but very slowly,” she
Over mid-winter break, a group of 21 GDS students traveled to Puerto Rico to help those still struggling to rebuild their lives five months after the devastation of Hurricane Maria. While we were fixing houses in Toa Baja, a town on the northern coast, one of the memorable people we met was Ernesto. Ernesto’s house had been destroyed by the water that rose to the second floor and lost one of his dogs in the flooding. “There was mold everywhere, roaches behind every piece of fallen debris, and everything was completely destroyed,” said junior Alex Wellisch of the house. Ernesto
In light of the recent teen suicides in the DC area, students all over the city posted a heart emoji on their Snapchat story to stand in solidarity with the friends and family of the lost loved ones in our community. Although not everyone that posted the heart knew these students personally, the sudden loss affected students in many different ways and sparked conversations about mental health, a topic that is widely ignored in schools. This lack of the previous conversation prompted the start of the new school club LOVE (Listen Observe Value Educate), whose goal is to have candid
In late November, a passionate group of GDS students and faculty attended a DC Board of Zoning Adjustment meeting to express their support for the plan to merge the two GDS campuses. The transfer of the campus to the empty lot will be a very practical and beneficial option, especially for parents who have children in different grade levels, but it will also be a large adjustment that both the GDS and Tenleytown communities will have to get used to. This current separation does not allow the younger and older members of the school to interact with each other and,
Taking place every Friday, assemblies are an integral part of GDS’s culture and mission. Assemblies present an opportunity for the community to both share experiences and exchange ideas without leaving the campus. While GDS offers a host of different assemblies each year, there are five core assemblies that occur annually: the Harvest assembly, the Christmas assembly, the Passover assembly, the MLK assembly, and the Pride assembly. The purpose of having an assembly is to expose students to different ideas. However, many students ditch assemblies because attendance is not taken. When a student misses an assembly, they could forego a potentially
This marks the first year the GDS high school did not hold traditional midterm exams. In a November letter to the GDS community, high school principal Katie Gibson wrote, “This change in our schedule will allow students and families to enjoy their winter breaks, with a firm end-date to the first semester falling prior to the departure for winter vacation. In addition, it allows us to add seven more teaching days to the calendar.” In the spring of last year, when Quinn Killy announced that GDS would not be holding midterms for the following school year, it seemed pretty surreal.