Via Yang

Illustration by Via Yang

In these next couple of months, seniors will hear back from schools and find out where they are going after high school. At many high schools, including Mounds View, there is an Instagram account run by the senior class officers where students can share their future plans, such as attending college or university, the military, trade school or other post-secondary options. 

Seniors Henry Collins and Colin Holly Wells decided to submit an acceptance to a three-year internship at the Royal Eijsbouts Bell Factory in the Netherlands. Unbeknownst to the class officers, the story was a complete lie. Starting with a comment about how senior Spencer Olson’s back posture was so bad that he looked like he was going to work a shift at the Danish bell factory, the comment grew into a full-blown lie with an elaborate backstory. 

It did not take long to get the false post up once they had submitted it. “All I really had to do was put in a real location, then something that seemed logical, like a three- or four-year internship,” said Collins. Some of Collin and Holly Wells’ friends who were in on the joke helped escalate this by feeding into it. “There is no Royal Eijsbouts Bell factory actually present in Denmark, but there is a bell foundry of the same name located in the Netherlands instead, which we thought was close enough to be ‘basically’ a real Danish Bell Factory at that point,” said senior Spencer Olson. 

Quickly after the post, people began to question the validity of this obscure internship, and Collins began to construct a narrative around his decision. “I learned about the history of the bell factory and how bells are founded, as well as ringing methods, and I learned all that in a few days,” said Collins. “And then I made up a story about how my family came from Denmark, and my uncle was able to get me in contact with a small artist and scholarship because of his connection to bell foundries as one descendant of a multi-generational line of bell founders over in Europe.”

One of the first people to learn about the prank was Shreeya Pavani, one of the senior class officers in charge of reviewing the submissions for the Instagram account. “I really didn’t know what to make of it,” said Pavani. But like many others, it seemed just obscure enough to be true. “It is pretty crazy, but it’s not so far-fetched that I couldn’t believe it was or even question that it was real,” said Pavani.

The decisions posted to the page caused mixed reactions from many students, as people could not decipher if they were truthful or not. “My initial reaction was very much like, ‘Woah, is this real?’ It definitely was out of left field,” said senior Thomas Baker-Trinity. “I was honestly more surprised that so many people who didn’t know them just insisted they were lying or joking.” 

This is one of the first years that this has become an issue for the Instagram account. Originally operating on the honor system, the senior class officers decided to start requiring evidence in order to validate and post the decision. Collins and Holly Wells both provided proof, using an online internship acceptance letter template. “If it looks apparently obvious that it’s fake, then obviously we don’t post that. But this was kind of a unique case because we don’t really know what an offer letter from the Danish bell factory is supposed to look like,” said Pavani. “So because it seemed generally valid, and they really committed to the bit, we just went with it and decided to post it on the off-chance that it could be true because we didn’t want to invalidate that if it was true.”

 She and the other senior class officers have received backlash for posting the fake decisions. “There’s been a lot of feedback from people saying that they don’t want fake ones to be posted because it takes away from all the people who are actually posting their real decisions,” said Pavani. “I don’t think that people are taking into account the things that we’re trying to balance between being respectful to people and also posting real commitments there.”

Others do not feel that it is that serious. “If it’s just a fun little page to show where people are going, [they] might be open to taking in prank applications or silly applications like that,” said Collins. 

Looking ahead, both Collins and Holly Wells are looking to attend a four-year university, but Collins has not completely ruled out bell founding. After lots of intensive learning about the subject, he said that he would possibly be interested in pursuing it. “It’s an interesting enough topic that I think it would be cool to go to another country and learn a science and a craft,” said Collins. Overall, however, Collins and Holly Wells acknowledge the effect that the false decision created for students. “Misinformation is very easy to spread,” said Holly Wells. “I didn’t know how easy it would be if you just seemed wholly convicted in something that seemed just weird enough to be true.”