Chapel Hill High School students have found new ways to keep their peers in check: Instagram accounts.
It all started last fall when a student crashed his car into a ditch in the student parking lot. For a short while, it was the talk of the school. Accounts had already begun popping up chronicling poor parking at high schools in the area, but the incident prompted Chapel Hill High School sophomore Dana Peich to create @chhsbadparking on Instagram.
“I got my inspiration from two people on my jump rope team who posted pictures of people’s bad parking at our gym,” Peich said. “After I saw the truck go into the ditch before school one day, I thought, ‘Why not make my own account?’”
The account has garnered over 660 followers since its first post on November 6, 2021.
Other profiles, such as @chhs.slumped—which posts photos of students caught sleeping in class—and @chhsposturecheck—made to call out students for their poor posture—were created shortly after, accumulating around 700 followers collectively.
Piech is one of the co-creators of the now-deleted profile @chhsposturecheck, along with senior Emmy Dean Rouse.
“We knew that there were definitely [students at the school] with awful posture and decided to make an account to post different ways that people sit,” the creators said.
The phenomenon of this type of account becoming a school-wide sensation is not limited to Chapel Hill High School. Other schools in the district and nationwide are seeing the same types of profiles being created.
On Tuesday, December 7, principal Charles Blanchard made an announcement that all of the accounts needed to be deleted immediately, as they were in violation of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools’ Community Code of Conduct.
Much to students’ dismay, most of the accounts posted farewell notes and subsequently did as told. However, some, such as @chhsnonsense, dedicated to posting strange occurrences around the school from spilled food to bathroom stall art, remained up as they did not violate any privacy rules.
“I liked the accounts because, after being out of school [for a year], there hadn’t been a lot of connectedness to other students,” senior Mia Kalish said. “I understand why they’re worried about privacy, but if they let people approve of photos first, that issue could be avoided.”
@chhsbadparking retaliated against the news by posting one last poorly parked vehicle with the caption, “#freechhsbadparking.” The account returned to posting, albeit sparsely, a few days later.
Since then, the suspended pages have begun to pop back up, and new ones, such as @chhsaffirmations—an account that posts light-hearted, user-submitted jokes about school-wide occurrences—have surfaced.
“No one will pull the fire alarm this week,” reads one post, poking fun at an incident that occurred earlier in the year. “Our sports teams will not lose to [Cardinal Gibbons High School],” reads another.
All in all, the vast majority of the accounts appear to be outlets for students to bond with one another and discuss shared experiences.
”I think it’s all in good fun, and nothing was posted in a hateful nature,” Kalish said.
