Sixth grader Cade von Weller puts his phone into the small prison home each morning during advisory as he goes on with his day, thinking it will be safe. Little did he know that the people enforcing the prison rules on freshman and middle schoolers would be the ones abusing the phones themselves.
“After school, I went to grab my phone from my advisor, everything was normal, she handed it to me and I turned it on, but then I saw a selfie of Mr. Wilson as my wallpaper,” von Weller said.
Von Weller let loose a shriveling shriek upon looking at his phone so loud that the other advisors next door came sprinting over to see what was going on.
“I got so scared when I turned my phone on because I expected to see my nice beach wallpaper, instead, it was a scary sight of Mr. Wilson just smiling,” von Weller said.
Soon, a cacophony of voices joined von Weller. More and more terrified screams were coming from middle schoolers.
“I looked at my friend’s phones in my advisory and it seemed like they all had some version of this photo, all of Mr. Wilson’s dif-
ferent selfies,” von Weller said. “We were all really confused on why our wallpapers had all changed during the school day and were wondering if Mr. Wilson had gone crazy.”
Wilson admitted, after students rushed into his office with millions of questions, that he had not gone crazy but instead was leaving the selfies as gifts for the students.
“I know I have been stricter on dress codes and the students have not been too happy with me recently, so I wanted to make it up to them and try to get them back on my side,” Middle School Dean of Students Jeff Wilson said.
It seemed like this method worked because the more Wilson kept leaving photos for the students, the more the students loved him.
“All of us would try to find him stealing the phones, but he was so sly we could never catch him,” von Weller said.
He eagerly gives his phone to the advisor and goes off to class. But as von Weller is in class, Wilson sneaks into the advisor’s room, using all of the tactics he learned in his previous job as a ninja. He waits until the middle schoolers have lunch, so nobody is in there. He leaps into a somersault and lands right by the advisory doors, where he takes his massive golden master key to unlock the doors. en he walks to the closest bathroom and strikes his grand pose, specifically pose 28 from “Dress to Impress,” as he takes a selfie in the mirror … taking about 600 a day. Once the school day is over, the phones are given back to the
students, and awaiting them is their brand new wallpaper.
“At first it was weird with these random selfies, but now it was fun to give my phone in because I know when I come back to it
a glamorous photo would be there,” von Weller said.
The freshman who also did not have their phone heard about this experience going on in middle school.
“I hope Mr. Wilson or any administrator doesn’t go on my phone and take selfies, that’s just
weird,” freshman Anjali Mogallapu said.
Also wanting a little love for himself, Assistant Head of Upper School Sebastiaan Blickman tried out this new tech-
nique.
“I thought I could use this tactic to win the freshman back over for all the dress coding and phone-taking that goes on,” Blickman said.
After sneaking selfi es onto ninth grade phones, Blickman awaited the glory that would come with it. Mogallapu went to grab her phone from her advisor on a normal day after school, but what she saw on her wallpaper did not make her love Blickman.
“I saw the new wallpaper on my phone that Mr. Blickman had left me and immediately went to Dr. Bonday’s office to report it,” Mogallapu said.
