By Benjy Berkowitz’18, Cool and Nice Guy and Also Friend! Good at Humor.

Once again I find myself writing an article about the bell. My last exposé was ignored by the staff, but no matter. I think these articles belong in the news section because of the major weight they hold in the Newark Academy community.

Anyways, this new problem has the school on the brink of a revolution. The last time I saw a petition thrown around this fast was when the good water fountains were changed to weird less good water fountains. The old bell, adored by all students and faculty, was a pleasant low B flat (according to reliable source Rebecca Slater ’18). Students looked forward to the bell – not because it signified the end of class, but because everyone loved to hear that blissful ring. When I heard it I was immediately transported to a picturesque beach with a virgin pina colada in my hand. Then I would go to my next class ready to learn.

In order to understand why the new bell is so bad we need to go back the heartbeat of our planet, which is eight hertz. A little guy named Winfried Otto Schumann says that eight hertz also happens to be the frequency of the double helix in DNA replication. Now how could little ol’ Schummann figure this out? Maybe it’s because he majored in electrical engineering at Karlsruhe. Karlsruhe is the oldest technical university in Germany, so I think it’s safe to say that when Schumman says that our brains are synchronized to work at eight hertz, he is right. If you take eight hertz and go up five octaves you will get to 256 hertz, which is a B on the same scale.

But now there’s no beach – we have a harsh A, sometimes an A flat! After all these proven benefits, why wouldn’t the school want the old bell? For them it’s all about people actually being able to “hear” the bell and getting to classes “on time.” In hindsight, it’s pretty insignificant compared to the heartbeat of the earth!

One good thing does come from the bell. We, as students, now have a valid excuse to pay zero attention in class. Our brains simply cannot function after hearing a bell of such wretched tuning. I guess you could say this bell is blown – as in the blow of a whistle. I’m talking whistle blowing. As in I am blowing the whistle.