By Tim Dolan, Lookout Advisor
Following the success of gambling on non-sports events through prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, a shadowy group of BHS students known only as “The D109 Crew” has begun setting odds on the morning teacher absence announcements. “This whole thing started one day when I had subs for three periods in a row, and so I went back through all of Nina Tate’s emails and tallied every teacher absence for the year” said one of the aforementioned “Crew,” but only after setting up a VPN on their iPad and emailing with an address in the Cayman Islands.
While slow at first, the action has really picked up recently. “I just bet three weeks of English notes on Mr. Peters to be absent on Thursday,” said freshman Porter Venuti, “somebody is going to know all about implicit allusions if I lose.” Peters, as it turns out, is absent more often on Thursday than on any other day of the week.
Some other less mathematically inclined students seem to be creating their own novel methods of information gathering. “For me, it turns out listening in class works. Sometimes in between all that babble about the War of 1812, I catch a teacher talking about how their child is sick, and I get the bet in for the next day,” said freshman Mikayla Volcy. A couple students have even gone so far as to ask teachers about their personal lives as a way to figure out when they might take a personal day. “I’ve just started asking every teacher if they’ve been invited to any out of state weddings this spring,” freshman Azaela Manke told The Lookout, “it’s a foolproof way to get a bet in before the odds shift.”
When students were asked about the jump in school climate, and test scores that seem to be resulting from these “listening” and “asking questions” methods, they all responded in the same way: “that seems like an unrelated occurrence.”
