This April Fools’, joke is on staff

See Stilgani’s article here

See Entz’s article here

 


 Sara Gabriele/Staff Writer

The morning of April Fools’ found seniors Alex Entz and Vincent Stigliani hurriedly rushing to finish writing two meticulous prank articles. After pulling a similar prank last year, the two decided to team up again to write two new fake articles: one for the math department on disproving a Fermat’s Theorem and the other for psychology about some new doubts to the popular positive psychology theory.

Stigliani decided to take on the challenge of writing about doubts cast upon the newest discipline in psych in hopes of fooling AP Psychology teacher, Charles Blair-Broeker.
Using his own AP Psych notes and a little bit of Googling, Stigliani crafted his mock article.

But Blair-Broeker has a keen eye to get by. As a proofreader for AP essays and various publications, he said he’s “developed somewhat of a radar for April fools jokes.”

“He’s a very intelligent guy and knows his psychology, so I knew there was a good chance that he would see through it. Plus, it was right on April Fool’s,” Stigliani said, “but I thought the detail I put in the layout, making it look like a real news story, might fool him.”

Blair-Broeker admits to being fooled a little, if only for about a paragraph.

“It was very well done,” Blair-Broeker said, pointing out the layout that included a fake copyright, web advertisements and the names of psychologists he was familiar with. “Vincent did a really good job.”

Entz also included similar layout features and details to make his article about the disproof of Fermat’s Theorem as believable as possible. He left his fake article on the table in the math department in hopes pre-calculus teacher Dave Kofoed would fall victim to the prank.

“I remembered the NOVA video Mr. Kofoed had showed us at the end of last year and how he was really into the whole concept of Fermat’s last theorem,” Entz said. “I thought it’d be fun to act like it had been disproven, so I found a bunch of real-life people and molded their information into a story.”

Kofoed took the bait.

“It was just sitting there,” Kofoed said. “I thought maybe one of the other math teachers had put on the table, and I thought, well, it’s certainly possible there are some flaws in it (the theorem).”

Although he said he probably would have become suspicious had he taken the time to Google it, Kofoed admits to jumping on the prank.

He shared the article with his fellow math teachers, and in addition, read and discussed it in his pre-calculus classes.

Entz said he was pretty excited to hear he had managed to prank a teacher with his fake article, although he may be one of the last to do so.

“Next year, I’m going to be on guard,” Kofoed said.

 

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