By Justin Sanderson & Kaylee Wasco
The Charger
H. H. Dow High School
Division 1, Yearbook
Academic Writing
In the .4 Government class, there was a House of Representatives and a president that was elected by the students. These elected officials called the shots for that particular hour. The strength of sophomore President Maggie Schaller’s decision making skills were tested in Jeffrey Richard’s first semester fourth hour Government class. While the House of Rep’s went out into the hallway to practice their roles in bill passing, math teacher Garrett Turner walked out and grabbed junior house member Eric Hus. Hus was locked in the math classroom across the hall, while Turner continued teaching his class. Turner later revealed this was not out of the blue, but was in fact planned.
“Mr. Richards told me to kidnap somebody,” Turner said. “ I always do what Mr. Richards says, and he told me that [the class was] creating their own government and that the classroom is safe territory, but anywhere outside is [international waters].”
After the other students had realized what was going on, they looked to President Schaller for advice on the situation. Meanwhile, Hus was held captive in the .4 Algebra class, wondering what would happen next.
“ [The math students] were all laughing a lot,” Hus said. “ I didn’t say much, and I thought I was just stuck in there because I didn’t really know my classmates, and I didn’t know if they liked me [enough to get me back].”
Schaller weighed all of the options, and finally came up with the idea of making a trade to get Hus back from Turner.
“Lots of people in the class wanted to go to war [with Turner’s class], but I wanted to be a little more diplomatic about it,” Schaller said. “ I thought that if we went to war, it would be a bit of a hassle. To minimize the casualties, we would negotiate.”
The first offer presented to Turner’s class were some dry erase markers in exchange for Hus. However, Turner and his class were very particular in the trading process, and tried to push the limits as far as possible. They denied the markers because they wouldn’t accept the colors that Schaller had to offer.
As a result, the president proposed the idea of baked goods. After multiple negotiation tactics by the mathematicians, a contract was approved through the window, signed, and slid under the door. The House of Reps and the president herself stated that if Hus was returned that day, 50 chocolate chip cookies containing Oreo cookies inside, two gallons of milk, and the appropriate tableware would be delivered to the math class on the following Monday.
“ I asked for white board markers that you can get at any office store for a few bucks, but they wanted to negotiate,” Turner said. “So instead, they negotiated with cookies, which probably turned out to cost a whole lot more than white board makers. We ended up with enough cookies for two per person, a gallon of two percent white and chocolate milk, cups, and napkins. The whole nine yards.”
Turner claimed that Hus didn’t actually want to leave, and if he had tried to, they would have just let him. However, in the end, Hus was returned safely and didn’t encounter any physical or mental harm.
“ I thought that was very nice of [Schaller to make cookies],” Hus said. “She has baking skills, and I guess that was pretty important for her as President at the time.”