By Jonathan Sager, Staff Writer
This past march, River Hill’s FBLA club traveled to Ocean City Maryland for the annual State Leadership conference, or the SLC. Strangely, while FBLA was competing in the SLC the weather here in Howard County turned south and became incredibly unpredictable and extreme in the worst ways. In just a couple days, the weather at River Hill shifted from extreme heat to extreme cold.
While on paper, the SLC claims to be a statewide competition where FBLA members from schools across Maryland compete in categories such as leadership, public speaking, financial management, planning and advertising, this might not be the case. Instead, our FBLA may have participated in certain rituals that caused the intense weather patterns in Howard County. Rivaling the peak of the summer months. Temperatures were as high as 80 degrees to rain, snow and even the threat of tornadoes, all in just a couple days. The question is however, are these two events related, and what role does River Hill’s FBLA play in this change in weather.
Despite the club’s size, being the biggest club in River Hill, FBLA is notorious for being an incredibly secretive club. Many students at River Hill such as Junior Gaurav Sadanala view FBLA as mysterious, saying, “FBLA, yeah they kinda keep to themselves,” corroborating the popular view of FBLA among the student body of River Hill
On the other hand, members of FBLA try to deny any occultish aspects of FBLA. Club member junior Ben Gavin explains, “we like to keep to ourselves, it helps us develop our culture and helps members bond with one another.” While the club members like this air of secrecy and “culture” the club claims to have, it leads to some pretty natural questions. Mainly, how has FBLA influenced terrible weather in Maryland as of late.
While most of the students of River Hill High School had to suffer with rain, tornadoes and power outages, FBLA was at Ocean City, a beautiful Ocean town. However, there was one problem: it was mid-March. Senior Evan Tom laments about how, “it was a bummer that we couldn’t really spend time on the beach because it’s still winter.” In order to combat this problem, members of FBLA may have tapped into the connections they have gained through their business experience and performed a ritual to bring summer early across all of the State of Maryland. This would explain the warm weather seen earlier in the week on Thursday. However, rituals and deals of this nature usually come with drawbacks and monkey’s paws, as FBLA leaving Ocean City may have caused the snow and tornadoes Maryland has seen since as the club left the beach. They no longer had any use for warm summer weather, so the other part of the deal was fulfilled to cover the tracks of FBLA.
Freshman Hannah Mooncalf recounts how she “saw a bunch of businessmen and FBLA officers walk into a room and lock the door, when I tried to enter they wouldn’t let me.” Suspiciously, White claims this meeting was for “officers only and that I wasn’t allowed since I was not an officer, and also because I am not valuable to FBLA since I slept in one day and gave an important presentation in my pajamas.” White suspects that this business meeting was actually part of an occult ritual to change the weather since it was so secret.
Additional evidence of this sinister ritual is shown through the positive sentiment FBLA had towards the Ocean City trip. Gavin reflects on how “it was really fun to improve our skills in a competition like this,” which proves how there were rituals performed there to change the weather, since the weather would positively polarize their mood. Suspiciously, even new members such as freshmen Larry Smith “can’t wait for more experience to contribute to FBLA,” adding more uncertainty to the events of the SLC.