Journeying to Room 507 of Sentinel High School requires a cold walk to a rickety annex, seemingly detached from the main building entirely. Hard to find, tucked in the back lot, the annex is just the gateway. As inconspicuous as the building may seem from the outside, Room 507 is anything but hard to notice.
Posters and printed out Twitter (X) memes point the way to a constantly dim hallway, lit only by the lamps ‘aesthetically’ placed about. Random tapestries hang from the walls, and if not for the vaguely book-related assignments tacked up sporadically, the hall would appear to be the work of a kid with unlimited access to their parent’s Amazon Prime account. Adult money can certainly buy anyone quite a lot of Amazon trinkets, a fact that Kelly Bathje is incredibly well acquainted with.
Batje,A revered graduate of a state college somewhere that isn’t Montana, Bathje runs Sentinel’s newspaper, the Spartan Scoop. Although, maybe newspaper isn’t the right word. Newspaper references a piece of paper, something the Scoop hasn’t seen in years.
With every new version of the publication comes new people. High schoolers cycle through that classroom faster than the Scoop’s four readers can keep up with. Often picked up after their sophomore year, students are handpicked specifically from Bathje’s pool of the most eccentric English 2 students. Eccentric, but admittedly gifted with some spark of youthful creativity. Or whatever.
Despite the Scoop’s challenging admission process, Bathje has been known to pick up random kids because of a desperate email and the word of some elderly, bald senior. When interviewed about their first experiences meeting Bathje, references to the woman’s ‘lack of ability to restrain the physical interpretation of her brain’ had popped up more than ever recorded in a single sitting.
It would be wise to never meet Bathje for the first time in her natural habitat. She’s at her full power, and this much raw personality is simply unfair to unleash upon some poor, unsuspecting kid.
The lucky teens that make it through this grueling and sometimes rather intimidating introduction are then introduced to a whole new battle; collaboration and competence (oh the horror!).
Collaboration and competence are the governing principles of the Newsroom. Incompetent children are weeded out and promptly removed upon discovery, often within the first few weeks. Bathje has usually already gone through the process herself of vetting these kids.
Working in the Spartan Scoop is any introvert’s worst nightmare. Any individual in the publication, regardless of role, will work with every person at least once. People have to…*gasp*…make friends. Thus, the collaboration.
Whether one likes it or not, they will be forced to work with their peers. It’s inescapable, especially as the publication time is held during a class period. Every person in that room is trapped with each other, working together under ‘90s music posters and specifically curated mood lighting.
The lighting is very important; with too much of it, everyone in the room would wither to dust and then there would be no more Scoop. Then how would people get their share of perfectly eloquent and articulate teenage writing?
This amount of close proximity to the same people every day can ruin a staff…or, it can make it. Working in that room is like entering a family reunion every morning.
There are:
– the weird uncles that never really make conversation with anyone (Photography)
– the little cousins that hide themselves in a different room to conduct secret – but very loud – shenanigans (Podcast)
– that relative that has the ‘impressive, cool job’ that their parents can’t help but bring up at every gathering (Web Managers)
– the grown up table that seems boring unless one is filled in on the joke (Editors)
– the older cousins that are too old to play with the littles but don’t really do anything besides sit in a corner by themselves (Illustration)
– the eccentric aunt that can’t help the slightly politically incorrect comments at the dinner table (Bathje)
– and finally, the random but very large arrangement of relatives that no one ever really remembers being related to, but who always manage to find a way back regardless (Reporters).
The reporters are the most widely recognized staffers, but everyone in the publication has a very specific role that only they can fill. Until, of course, they are killed and replaced (also referred to as ‘graduation’).
Being a reporter is sometimes the worst choice anyone could ever make in their life, and sometimes the most gratifying occupation that any single person could partake in. Being a reporter is toeing the line between ascending to god-like hubris, and empathizing with the deer that wander onto dark roads as a car drives by. 10/10 best job, would recommend.
In the Spartan Scoop, reporters have a very large (sometimes too large) pool of creative and informative topics that they can choose to devote a grueling four days curating. What they lack in timeliness and eloquence, they certainly make up for in the well practiced art of looking like they’re busy when they’re actually playing Snake.io on their computer. Or, they’re caught snooping around and actually not doing a very good job of pretending to be working when they think that they’re sneaky. It’s really up to the individual reporter.
As hard and brain-consuming as working on the Scoop is, it is also one of the most fun classes Sentinel has to offer – if the verbal abuse and competitive spirit is ignored, which is pretty easy when being distracted by planning the next offensive strike of insults.
If a student survives the wild tornado of chaos and Caitlyn (our odd editor-in-chief) that is the Spartan Scoop, they will walk away with some of the most impressive work of their life and the closest friends they’ve ever made. Emphasis on the if.
A word to the wise: don’t ever let an elderly, bald senior use their good graces with Bathje to earn you a spot on the Scoop. You’ll spend your reporting career writing satire articles and being bullied by the editors in a blur of nepo-baby guilt and procrastination. Or, you’ll earn yourself a place on the editing staff. Emphasis on the or.
