A selfless person is one who values the needs and wishes of others over their own. Pretty simple, right? The REAL wonder of all the greats, however, is one’s motivations for being selfless. Why break up a fight? Why return a dropped wallet? Well, here at the Interlake Inquirer we’ve been pondering the question: What causes people to do good? To determine the answer to this question, we have conducted a series of silly little social experiments to discover a student’s motivations for selfless actions, or lack thereof.

Experiment #1: The TP Trail

We start our experiment with a tale as old as time. Our subject stuffs a piece of toilet paper into their shoe and lets it trail behind them, and then walks through the hallways. The goal is to see who notices the toilet paper and then give them a brief questioning as to why they did or didn’t help our subject with their embarrassing bathroom mishap. Our test dummy, if you will, was the glowing yet musty Anthony Wu. We had him trail the toilet paper behind him and walk through the halls aimlessly until he was found and hopefully assisted.

Our first possible selfless savior, Rishi Manjure comes strolling down the halls peacefully and gracefully, unaware of the situation he is walking into. After sauntering past Tony, we catch him eyeing the TP trail despite not saying anything about it. In an interrogation fit for Law and Order, our selfish villain, replying to the question of why he didn’t intervene in Tony’s situation, says, “I didn’t care”. This act of pure selfishness for one’s own time and energy while a fellow student is out and about, possibly embarrassing himself in front of eligible bachelorettes, set our hopes for finding heroic helpers in our school devastatingly low.

Despite our initial failure, our first selfless hero soon shone like a ray of sun on a cloudy day, shimmering through the chaos of the Interlake commons. Trisha Chakrabarti, a Junior, taps our subject on the shoulder and informs him of his toilet paper mishap. We question Trisha of her motives for her selfless behavior and she replies, “It was visually unappealing. I didn’t want him to be embarrassed… or whatever… he just got dumped, I don’t think he needs more embarrassment”. Tony’s face flushed red. He had just been exposed of his deepest and most heart wrenching secret. Despite the pain which Trisha brought somewhat unnecessarily to Tony, her kindness and aesthetic eye saved our subject from further embarrassment at the hands of the judgemental beast that is the Interlake student body.

Tony, although a little flustered from Trisha’s confrontation, continues to walk down through the commons, with his TP trail following closely. After he passes through a large crowd, it seems like nobody will say anything! But after a while, a group of young men and women start calling at him, “ayyy! Ya gotcha sumfin on ya shoe”. They say this in between gasps, as they are howling like heinous hyenas at the shocking sight of Tony’s TP trail. Tuck and Ethan march to interrogate the rambunctious youth, and ask what made them decide to tell Tony. Once the cacophony of cackling had subsided, one mischievous boy, Hriday Anand, exclaims, “cuh he looks mad stinky!”, and his friends agree with responses ranging from “eughhh”, “isa so gross cuh”, “zu suh stank” to “didn’t want him to embarizz himself with that stinky TP”.

Experiment 2: Death by Bench Press

The second experiment took place in the weight room, outside the auxiliary gym. The concept of the test is almost elementary. We see who will save our subject from a harrowing near death experience. To professionally conduct this experiment, athletic expert and bench-press fiend Ethan “Luscious Lips” Li, appears to attempt a 185 lb bench press PR, which is far from his true max of around 270.,lbs. As the bar descends, he struggles. He can’t get it back up. He flails his legs; he chokes and screams; he squeals in pain and despair like a little piggy whose house was just demolished by the big bad wolf. In a room full of self-proclaimed “lifters”, who will help the poor man and lift this weight off of him?

First, let’s set the scene. Luscious Lips is at his station in the far corner of the weight room - 185 lbs on the rack with no safety bars. The freshman goonsquad, in the squat rack next to him, are circled like a cult around a singular man benching 95 lbs. Undercover Interlake investigative journalists Tuck Ellis and Anderson Widjaja stand on the other side of the room, jibbering in their own jabber as to not attract attention.

In a relatively crowded gym, our experiment commences. Luscious gets the bar down, but seemingly cannot press it back up. He yells “Heeelppp! Pweeeaase! I’m too petite for this giant weight!”, yet no one seems to give his choking and exclaiming a second thought. It is only until sophomore class officer, Miles Xing, notices him, when Ethan is finally able to let out that juicy breath of sweet relief. After a questionable, shaky, and somewhat unprofessional spot, Miles was asked why he decided to help the cherry-faced Ethan. Miles cleverly remarked: “I saw his face was red as a tomato. I thought the big boy was bout’ to pop!” From eye-witness testimony, Miles heroically intervened in order to save Luscious’ life, without any regard for his own personal interests or safety, demonstrating his worthiness of being an Interlake class officer.

Our takeaways:

Contrary to popular belief, Interlake Senior High School is not just a place that inhabits rude degenerates, but it also is home to many do-gooders and kind people. After conducting these experiments, we found that these “do-gooders” were motivated by empathy, compassion, and benevolence. By analyzing these affable people, we find that in this world of hate and anger, further enhanced by social media, it becomes ever so important to be the positive beacon of light for the people around you. We have learned it is not enough to be a bystander; rather, we should strive to take action where we deem it necessary in order to protect the safety, feelings, and interests of others.