Note: this article was published in the 2017 Joke Issue.

As autumn drifted into Chicago’s cold, harsh winter, students who once could be found munching on their lunches in the courtyard quickly moved inside to the building’s warmth. As the temperature dropped, the number of students eating in the hallways, cat boxes, and library rose.

But just as the cold wind had swept them away from the outdoors, accusations of leaving trash in the library pushed students out of one of their favorite lunch spots. Devastated, destroyed, and defeated, the upper schoolers looked for an answer.

At the turn of second semester Upper School Librarian Annette Lesak hung photos of leftover food all over the library. The question on students’ minds was, “Did we really eat that much food in just a few months?” According to sophomore Sarah Jayne Austin, nobody believed those photos for a second.

“Well, at first we were really disappointed,” Austin said. “We just lost our go-to study and eating spot.  It was a lot to handle.” Austin had been walking with some friends through the now-empty library and happened to stumble upon the photos.

“At first I didn’t even notice what was wrong,” sophomore Simran Jain said. “We were late to class. Had I known, I wouldn’t have been so angry at first.” Once suspicions arose, they quickly made copies of the photos, analyzed what they saw, and brought their findings to Photoshop teacher Travis Chandler.

“I was pretty dubious that they had found any substantial evidence,” Chandler said. “But as I kept on looking, I saw it.” Out of the 28 photos hung on the wall, the middle picture third row from the bottom and the right hand side photo fourth row from the bottom particularly stood out to Chandler and Austin.

“It was really the shadow misplacement that caught my eye,” Chandler said. According to Jain, they had been suspicious from the start that upper schoolers had actually left this much food around the library.

Both pictures contained shadows facing the direction of the light. Most people didn’t bother to really look, but when Austin saw it, she took matters into her own hands.

After various opinions from professionals, Jain and Austin decided to present Lesak with their discoveries. “I had never been more nervous confronting someone,” Jain said. “I didn’t want to come off as rude, but we also knew we deserved the truth.”

As of now, the topics discussed when Austin and Lesak spoke are considered high-security and so, confidential. “Though they cannot share with the student body what actually happened,” Chandler said. “I was glad to see that these students were passionate about something they saw wrong and wanted to make a change.”

When contacted by this paper, Lesak gave no comment.