On April 6, at 8:24 p.m. a school wide group chat was made. No, not on Snapchat or any of the expected media. It was through the school’s email. The story behind it is both amusing and confusing, and everyone has the same question: “why?”

The email thread started when someone  hit “Reply All” to the morning announcements Gmail. Since the morning announcements go out to every student’s school email– just under 3 thousand students– received the email from Jason Castillo-Torres’ account, “do y’all know how I can get my hat back?”

The ensuing onslaught of replies in return left phones blowing up and recipients highly annoyed. Some contents of the thread were not for the faint hearted.

Principal David Pierce said the email thread and its contents are “still under investigation,” but when pressed about his opinion on the the subject his response wasn’t very thorough.

“It’s kind of ridiculous,” he replied. “I mean, people used their school email address to put cuss words and all kinds of stuff that could get them in trouble in there.”

When asked if any disciplinary action would take place against the students who committed such vulgarity, he assured us that “there could be because it’s against [the] acceptable use agreement,” possibly resulting in detention, and/or loss of exemptions.

The creator of the thread Jason Castillo-Torres said he is not the one who actually sent the email.

“I don’t know. It was supposed to be a joke. My friend sent it using my email. I didn’t even do it,” Castillo-Torres. He chose not reveal the friend’s name. He also said he did not expected it to receive the traction it got online and he even thought a few of the memes were pretty funny. According to him, “nobody ever talked to me about it and I never got in trouble.”

Even more shocking, there was no lost hat. It was all made up for the joke.

As of writing this, the email replies have ceased. Though only being active for a couple hours, the school-wide effect was felt throughout the next few days with more references and confusion.

It seems as though the student body has a short attention span.