Students Tackle ‘Crisis’

Students at Ventura’s Foothill High School got the bad news first: The U.S. faces a mysterious viral epidemic so severe it threatens millions from Boston to San Francisco. The president wants the nation’s finest scientific minds to devise a plan for avoiding widespread panic and death.

That was the scenario presented to 10th-graders Monday during a surprise assembly featuring a phony emergency news bulletin, chaotic scenes from the Dustin Hoffman movie “Outbreak,” and a visit from a somber presidential impersonator flanked by pretend Secret Service agents.

The elaborate production kicked off a 10-week interdisciplinary study of infectious diseases for Foothill’s 180 sophomores. Although students knew they would have a classwide research project this spring, the details were secret.

“We planned it as a total simulation and a complete surprise,” said biology teacher Wendi Butler, chairwoman of Foothill’s science department. “You want them to buy into the project and be excited about it, so creating memorable experiences and making them as realistic as possible is a hook.”

The dramatics started when the sophomores were summoned from their third-period classes at 9:40 a.m. by an ominous announcement over the public address system: “Attention all 10th-grade students. Your presence is required in Spirito Hall. Please stop whatever you are doing and immediately exit your class. This is not a drill.”

Once they were in the school auditorium, a videotaped image of geometry teacher Spencer Kellogg, posing as a network news anchor, appeared for a five-minute mock emergency broadcast interlaced with images from “Outbreak.” Kellogg described mass hospitalizations in five U.S. cities, quarantines enforced by the National Guard and a rising death toll.

Students hadn’t finished digesting that information when another teacher took the microphone to announce the arrival of President George W. Bartlett--played by Don Austin, the school district’s lawyer.

“This enemy has killed more innocent people than Hitler or Osama bin Laden. America is under attack from a biological weapon. Your input and recommendations are crucial to the defeat of this heinous enemy,” Austin said before he was escorted out by students wearing suits and dark sunglasses.

The illusion was maintained as sophomores divided into work groups to receive their sealed “presidential commissions.” Each group was assigned a disease, ranging from AIDS, influenza and the Ebola virus to anthrax, meningitis and bubonic plague.

During the next two months, students will assume the role of scientific advisors and be required to prepare taped public service announcements, develop Web sites on the history and social implications of their disease, and write position papers advising the president on how to deal with the crisis.

Infectious diseases will be studied in science, English and history courses. In May, each work group will present its findings to a panel that includes representatives from the county public health department and local doctors.

While keeping such an orchestrated event secret seems almost impossible, many students had no inkling what their teachers had planned. Some, assuming something was really wrong, were relieved.

“It was kind of scary when they had the voice coming into our classroom. I thought something big was happening, something having to do with the country,” 16-year-old Brandon Anderson said.

Overall, students said they appreciated their teachers’ efforts to engage them. “It was totally cheesy, but I loved it anyway,” said Chandler Christensen, 15.