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All of the movies, books, and television shows that have anything to do with high school show that upperclassmen are utterly feared by the lower grades. In some cases this is true, but most schools have come a long way when it comes to grade-to-grade relations. At least, as far as we know. Here at Avonworth, we decided to see how upperclassmen, sophomores, and even freshmen would react when someone fell and dropped their things all over the floor. Are the students at Avonworth rude or polite?
Freshman Miranda Chrvala came up with the idea of falling on the ground with all of her books and binders when other students were around to see how they would react. To test this experiment, Miranda went to numerous areas in the school and purposely wiped out.
The first test conducted was during the period 8 study hall in the cafeteria. Once two other students got set up to capture the reactions, Miranda walked in and collapsed in the middle of the floor- right in front of two seniors, Blake Aber and Justin Belotti, neither of them knowing Miranda. The initial reaction for most people in the room was shock, which was followed by laughter from people who know Miranda. Miranda sat on the floor beginning to pick up her things before the shock wore off and others joined in, including Justin and Blake. Other students farther away from the incident decided to ignore the situation and get back to their study hall.
The other experiments that were conducted took place in the hallways, as well as outside of the high school gym. In the hallways, a group of sophomore and junior girls watched and continued walking, and a junior boy stared down at her before awkwardly helping her gather her things. In the Middle School Cafeteria , the cross country team was walking to their bus when Miranda collapsed. Michael Blaser, a freshman who knew Miranda, laughed and continued walking, while a senior, Alex Domencic, stared with wide eyes down at Miranda, and looked around to see if others had witnessed what he did. After what felt like hours, he finally began to pick some things up; meanwhile a girl who was just walking into the middle school cafeteria rushed across the floor to see if Miranda was okay and to pick up the remaining things on the floor.
So, what can we gather from this? Miranda, along with other students were pretty shocked when someone went out of their way to help her, especially since she did not know who Miranda was and vice versa. As for the negative reactions, they weren’t exactly negative like we see in the movies. If someone laughed and walked away, they knew Miranda; if they didn’t help, it was because someone else was closer and helping already. To answer the question, “Are Avonworth students polite?”, according to this experiment, we are more so than some might think.
Additional Reporting by Dominique Raught
This social experiment is very interesting! This is good research.