Vandalized

While improvements to the school are exciting, students have become a little too overzealous at times

For the last few school years, the NAI staff and administration has been trying to make the school a more relaxed environment as a way to help with student stress.

By adding some couches in the halls, new floors, a fresh coat of paint, and some new additions to the lounge, the staff’s overall goal is to make the school a more enjoyable place for its students to be. But unfortunately, some of these new improvements of the school have been vandalized or stolen this year. Items that were donated or bought for students to enjoy but has ended up destroyed.

Over the summer, Mr. Hull and Mr. Geibel brought in a massage chair that was donated by Mr. Geibel’s sister. The chair was put in the Lounge as a way to let students relax a bit during the day, for example in a study hall or during a lunch period. But the cords to the chair were ripped out and it is now out of service.

“I think it’s a shame that, while in school, students don’t realize how lucky they are and the opportunities offered to them. The theft of this mixing board, which we got back, was one of those moments in which you realize: is it worth the effort to do something good?”

— Mr. Geibel

Also in the lounge, there are new gold and gray couches that were added during the renovations that took place over the summer. The couches have small pillows on them which are connected by elastic bands. Someone took scissors and cut the bands and now the pillows will no longer stay in their place.

Finally, once again in the Lounge, there is an audio system for the Acoustic Cafe which was stolen sometime last year.

Mr. Geibel, the acoustic cafe sponsor, said, “To make the lounge what it is, much of that stage area was donated by N’Stuff Music. One of the items was a 4 channel audio mixing board. 2 years ago, while taking my English classes down there to do some speeches, I left the equipment out as I came upstairs to get my next period class to take them down during class change. In the four minutes that I was gone, somebody had gone in and taken the mixing board. My immediate response was to look around as everybody does. I went straight to Dr. Hyland, informed him of what happened, and basically told him something to the effect that ‘We need to cancel Open Mic Night tonight.’ He acted a little more level-headed, got on the PA, and made an announcement that somebody may have mistakenly taken the mixing board from the lounge and if anybody did mistakenly take it, please return it to the office. There are no cameras in the lounge, but there are cameras on the stairs, and when we looked at the footage, all we saw were people coming up the stairs… we weren’t able to find anything on the camera. Within 20-30 minutes somebody came into the office claiming that they found it in the bathroom.”