Planet Stuy: The Dean

Today on Planet Stuy, we witness an incredible creature’s natural routine: the dean, a top predator, preying on students and feasting on their phones. While deans may be observed taking their morning coffee or chatting with fellow Stuyvesant staff from a distance, it is very rare to closely capture one on camera. Today, we follow an exclusive transcription of footage of one particular dean on their hunt for teens and, more importantly, their internet-enabled cellular devices.

We start by watching the dean come out of their office. Not much is known about what happens inside. Deans are fiercely protective of their office; no one has trespassed and lived to tell the tale. Our top scientists theorize that inside the office, they follow a hierarchical structure. “Dean” is actually a rank amongst teachers, not their own individual species. At the top stands Principal Yu, who manages the “exhaustion” (the name for a group of teachers, like a pack of wolves) and calls the shots. At the bottom are “new hires” and “student teachers.” However, today, our focus is on the “dean.” They are fairly high up in the caste system, but they are tasked with the dirty work. Today, our dean has been instructed to exit from their humble abode and search for one important thing: tonight’s dinner.

The dean starts their hunt on the second floor. Nothing. Students are shuffling around, haphazardly trying to form a line to scan out, but their most egregious misdemeanor is their clumsiness, nothing more. This is because students are instinctively adapted to sense minute reverberations caused by a dean’s presence, preemptively eliciting a fight-or-flight response. Students hide any illicit cellular devices as soon as they sense a dean is nearby. They also signal to the rest of the group about the coming predator, so everyone else can do the same. No one wants to have their phone confiscated right before they go outside, so they awkwardly smile and shuffle to make sure they are following all school laws.

Unfettered, the dean rides up the escalator with a walkie-talkie sputtering out small sparks of noise. All deans carry one, as it is their primary source of communication. Garbled roars and cries are transmitted and received at high frequencies across long distances. Recent studies have shown that these unintelligible noises may be part of a larger dean language that can communicate complex ideas such as “danger,” “coffee,” or even (on very rare occasions) something similar to human emotions. Here, the dean silences the walkie-talkie. Deans prefer ambushing their prey, so against the student body’s acute senses, deans need to minimize as much attention as possible or risk scaring away students.

Yet, once again, the dean scours the next floor to find nothing of value. No problem! They continue on their usual rounds. This routine is ingrained into all deans, although each has their own personal preferences. This particular dean is quite experienced and knows exactly where to look.

They furtively stride up to the fourth floor via the East Stairs and, instead of going up the escalators, make a right. This spot behind the escalators is quite attractive for many students. With its dim lighting, it’s usually forgotten about, even by students during passing periods. Our dean rounds the corner, hands ready to write someone up, eyebrows tensed to give a good, stern look, and then pounces to find—

No one?

This is quite a shock to the dean, but not unprecedented. However, their hunger for cellular devices has only increased. In a growingly desperate search, they scramble up every floor, ransacking other usual spots. The Sophomore Bar? Nothing. The seventh-floor benches? Not even a trace of wrongdoing. In grave desperation, the dean even scours a few floors of the Hudson staircase, home to the most imprudent students willing to blaspheme against school policies, engaging in troublesome activities from phone usage to—gasp—the touching of the lips. Yet, our now-worn and disappointed dean is still unable to scrounge up even a single smartwatch. By now, their hunger has grown tenfold.

Sad and tired, they dejectedly head back down to their office. They hesitate to reenter, inundated with shame and regret. Suddenly, their eyes light up. They begin running down to the first floor. Of course! They’d missed that in their initial search! Our camera crew is barely able to keep up with the dean in their ravenous pursuit.

The dean walks confidently, as they have their mind set on exactly what they want. They quickly smile and greet the security guards before moving past the desk and to the theater. Their upturned nose is quick to detect the particular stench of fear only found in guilty students’ sweat. Following the trail, the dean rounds the corner to the little nook by the fire exit. 

“Guys! There’s a teacher!” a student whispers loudly.

The dean smirks. Jackpot. They find an entire “insomnia” (the name for a group of students) mindlessly tapping away at their phones. Each one has been drawn by an invisible and biological drive to consume content, too distracted to have noticed the dean sneaking up on them.

“Alright, alright, phones and IDs out!” the dean barks.

At once, the students’ innate fight-or-flight responses are triggered. A couple of students choose to fight, blubbering out excuses that minimize or (if they’re bold enough) completely deny the dean’s accusation. They cry about how using their devices was necessary for submitting their assignments due the next period or how pulling up Google Classroom in the few seconds before getting caught qualifies as using their devices for academic purposes. 

They all quickly backed down after being met with the dean’s cold stare and hardened resolve. The students farthest away from the dean choose flight, slowly slinking away, silently praying they weren’t spotted beforehand. They sharply scoot their phone behind their own figure, temporarily concealing it. However, before this student can even begin to think about tucking their phone into their jacket, the dean points at the phone and motions for it to be handed over. A wordless success.

With the dean’s swift and clean technique, the students are decimated and rendered phoneless and ID-less in seconds.

With a wide grin, the dean tallies up all the differently colored phones and awkward freshman year IDs. 14. Two have matching sparkly unicorn stickers, three barely fit in the dean’s hands, and one belongs to a monster who gave it no case at all. But, no matter the size, shape, or color, the other teachers will be pleased with the haul. Our dean returns to the office satisfied with today’s hunt, providing enough food for the rest of the day and even some for tomorrow night’s dinner.

 By the end of the month, the teachers will collect up to 200 phones from other helpless students. The teachers will have to document each one very particularly. What happens beyond that is unknown.

That is all for today. We hope you return to Planet Stuy to witness more of the marvelous and unique life Stuyvesant has to offer.