The Great C.O.F.F.E.E. Heist

In every Lawrenceville academic building, you will find at least one standout piece of art. Except, that is, in Woods Memorial Hall. Nobody knows exactly why the poor English department is so bereft of interesting art pieces, with only paintings of old white men who have long since become irrelevant to the Gen-Z eye and our chronically online student body. Still, this appalling lack of artistic work has not gone fully unnoticed! The English teachers have harbored a festering resentment for this gross oversight that has long gone ignored. 

Last week, our community was shocked when iconic pieces of art from GCAD, Father’s Building, KMSC, and Noyes began to peculiarly disappear. GCAD’s canoe, built by students a few years ago, disappeared first, and most just assumed it had been relocated. But then the oft-ignored painting on the second floor of the math building was noticed to be gone. After that, the revered statue in Pop was discovered missing from its pedestal. When the large (and surely difficult to move) bust of MLK in Noyes disappeared, we knew something rotten was happening. The cause of these thefts remained a mystery, until the board of The Lawrence received an anonymous inside tip, informing them that the disappearing art pieces had been stashed in the eerie basement of Memorial Hall. Cautious, but too curious to resist investigating, the board selected us (very qualified detectives) to find out more.

That night, a concerned Head of School Stephen Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21 provided us with a ring of old keys to unlock the heavy doors, and we set off to figure out what could be happening. We struggled for a moment to select the correct key, as several ornate and rusted options from various decades surely led to little-know musty basements around campus, but eventually, we found the correct one. It took us a minute to do so, as we have unfortunately become accustomed to using our all-purpose fobs. 

What greeted us when we finally got the doors to open (with difficulty), was certainly not what we expected. Across the entrance, a brightly colored banner hung. It read: “Coalition Of Frustrated Furious English Educators,” with the acronym “C.O.F.F.E.E” splashed in bold below. Rather than the decrepit and abandoned concrete room we expected, a vivid green hue emanated from the fairy lights strung across the walls. A fire burned Merril(l)y in a fire pit just below the grate which has always released a strange smoke at random times during the door by the doors closest to Pop. Packs of jumbo marshmallows rested on a table nearby, speared with sticks ready to roast. But most shockingly of all, behind all of this, rested a haphazard pile of every art piece that had gone missing. 

Suddenly, the doors slammed shut. In the ominous, dark mist, our hearts dropped. A group of ten English teachers loomed, each wielding a hardcover dictionary threateningly above our heads. 

We’ve been in this basement subsisting on marshmallows for days, terrified of these literary lunatics. Every morning at six, the English teachers gather to worship a larger-than-life statue of the Oxford comma, before dumping a stack of student’s papers in front of us which they have tasked us with grading (you may have noticed that your papers have been graded more efficiently since), and rewarded us with screen time. We have typed out this article in many small increments as a last resort, under the watchful eyes of a lazily graffitied rendition of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg (please send help).