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Olympia student video was made for 'laughs'

February 4, 2012 @ 8:35 am (Updated: 7:03 am - 2/5/12 )

A video showing Olympia High School students stumped by the most basic questions about politics, current events and geography was edited to make students laugh. It's not an accurate reflection of students' intelligence, according to the video creators.

AustinThe two students who shot the video now admit it was heavily edited to include only a few correct answers, with the majority being silly answers they thought would be entertaining.

Problem is, the video was picked up by national websites, including the Huffington Post, and it made the school look bad.

The video, shot at Olympia High School, features classmates struggling to answer basic civics questions.

Here's an example of a question and answer exchange. When classmates were asked to name the Vice President of the United States, some replies included, "George Bush," "The bald guy - Clinton, right?" and "I don't know, somebody - bin Laden."

The video appears to show how poor the education system is, but it doesn't reflect the reality at Olympia High. The school, with about 1,700 students, has high test scores. 92 percent of 10th graders passed the state reading test last year, 95 percent passed the writing test, and 72 percent passed science. Those test scores are on par with Bellevue High School and other high-achieving schools.

Olympia High School is in the top 5 percent of schools in the state. So why did the students in the video look so dumb? Many didn't even know Olympia was the capital.

Olympia High School juniors Austin Oberbillig and Evan Ricks say they edited the video to get laughs around the school, and some students were trying to be funny by coming up with absurd answers.

They said in a statement, the video is not a fair representation of the student body:

"The video that we made as a school project has received a lot of unexpected media attention, and has been co-opted into an ongoing political debate that has become quite volatile. It should be known that we filmed for several hours, during which time many students gave correct responses; the film represents a short segment of the most entertaining answers. The bottom line is that we made the video to get a few laughs around our school, and it turned into something bigger. It was not our intent to polarize people, set off a firestorm, or get people to point fingers. Having said that, people will take from it what they will. We want to continue our work as student journalists in a productive manner."

The "Lunch Scholars" video has had more than half a million views on YouTube.

Photo: Screen grab of student Austin Oberbillig, who says he's learned a lesson from this experience.

By Linda Thomas

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Comments (34)


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  • Chuck Gould wrote...
    This video is a reflection of the viewer's intelligence, not the students
    February 4, 2012 8:00 am
    This old trick. The only thing more disgusting than the trick itself, is how well it works.

    Goes like this:

    Target a group that you want to make look ridiculously uninformed. Fox News did this (IIRC) at some Obama rallies during the 2008 campaign,[Dori Monson got a lot of mileage out of them, back then] and sound bytes using this same technique have been heard on Rush Limbaugh and similar shows.

    Send a cameraman and a reporter to ask ridiculously simple questions of the intended victims. Ask hundreds of people simple questions like "How many starts on the US flag", and you will get a half dozen or so who will make a goof ball mistake in the answer.

    Edit out the 194 correct responses, ("There are 50 stars on the US flag"), and cobble together the 6 goof balls who said 51, 52, or 53. If you don't get enough goof ball answers, have a shill stand in and pretend to be one of the Democrats, Republicans, students, etc.

    Show the finished video. A frightening percentage of the population will conclude "Wow, those liberals (or conservatives, or students, or Christians, or Jews, or blacks, or whites, or whomever) are sure a bunch of dunderheads! Not one of them even knows how many stars there are on a US flag! Not one! Obviously, they are *all* that stupid!"

    Naw, the only really stupid folks are those who allow the media to distort their view of the world with footage so heavily edited that the ultimate result is really no different than a deliberate lie. I remain stunned at the number of people who have been sucked in by Brietbart, and others.

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  • TheNewsChick wrote...
    You can't always believe what you see
    February 4, 2012 8:08 am
    I'm with you Chuck! I saw this video yesterday on Huff Po and heard Dori talking about it and knew something didn't add up. I've been an education reporter for years and I knew Olympia HS was one of the top schools in the state, so I've been trying to get the full story before jumping to the conclusion that "this is how pathetic our education system is." That said, I do think you could ask these questions of a lot of students and they wouldn't know. You could ask those questions of a lot of adults and they'd be stumped too. The students have a lot to learn about journalism. I think they should to a journalistic follow up by making their unedited video available. It's a good reminder to others not to jump to conclusions about something they see on YouTube too.
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  • Derrol_o wrote...
    Let me guess, Chuck
    February 4, 2012 8:47 am
    Without actually knowing anything about this Brietbart fellow, since you used him as an example along with Fox News earlier in your post I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess he's probably someone who subscribes to conservative political views, no?
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  • Chuck Gould wrote...
    Derrel-O, do a little research on Brietbart....(but I also used Democrats, Republicans, Christians, Jews, blacks, whites, liberals, conservatives....)
    February 4, 2012 10:25 am
    During the 2008 Presidential campaign, a Brietbart video went viral. It was supposedly secret footage filmed in the offices of the group known as ACORN. ACORN was extremely active in registering voters prior to the 2008 election, and there were hundreds of offices all over the country. According to the video, a man and a young woman (who falsely claimed to be a hooker and a pimp) got some assistance from a volunteer in one of the ACORN offices to do some illegal or disgusting act or another. I can't remember specifically what the offense was, (might have been fraudulent voter registration) but it pushed a bunch of "hot buttons" among many of the conservative viewers of the film.

    The backlash to the video was predictable. "ACORN supports Obama, so therefore Obama endorses anything done by any of the thousands of ACORN volunteers across the country! If Obama wins the election, it will be because ACORN registered hundreds of thousands of illegal voters!Anybody who votes for Obama is in favor of election fraud!"

    There have been other Brietbart videos since, all designed to reflect badly on Democrats, liberals, university professors, organized labor, etc. Many of them were easily discredited, and Brietbart went from being a heroic warrior for conservatism to a major embarrassment for the majority (that would be the intelligent majority) of the right wing.

    I recall Brietbart finally admitting, within the last 12-18 months or so, that the original ACORN video was very, very, very, heavily "edited".

    Are these video fabrications an exclusive domain of the angry right? Not at all. However, any mentality that is quick to accept a negative perspective of the world and gravitates toward making sweeping conclusions about entire groups based on the worst available examples of individual behavior will be more eager to accept such evidence. An example of that, in the case of the high school video, might be a politically motivated speaker who begins shouting, "Look at how badly education has suffered in this state, under the political party currently in power!"

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  • daveismenotyou wrote...
    Chuck
    February 5, 2012 4:27 pm
    The ACORN vid fallout was well after the 2008 election
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  • spuddog wrote...
    Chuck...
    February 4, 2012 12:15 pm
    you're a sharp guy, but you're making some pretty heavy assumptions here. You don't know how many students were asked these questions. And my guess is the students who made this video got raked over the goals by administrators and teachers and are now backtracking big time. Listen, the fact that any of these kids did not know our state capital or thought Bush or bin Laden is vice president or that the U.S. is bordered by too many countries to name is pretty scary.
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  • CH wrote...
    I get all my NEWS from FOX . . . .
    February 4, 2012 8:03 am
    no wonder Im so stupid.
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  • daveismenotyou wrote...
    Well you are right about one thing
    February 5, 2012 4:31 pm
    You are stupid.
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  • anotherfencewalker wrote...
    Not THAT made up..
    February 4, 2012 8:07 am
    Good job for the student filmaster. He made suckers out of the media, including a certain daytime talkshow host at KIRO..But..I'm willing to bet that if you took those same questions and went into the student body of another school (pick one) you would be horrified at some of the answers that are NOT scripted.
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  • Mike Hunt wrote...
    Just entertainment
    February 4, 2012 10:43 am
    Nothing else & good for them. This is very similar to "Jaywalking" - anyone who thinks either is 'journalism' needs to take a step back. Great practice in media education/production for the students in Oly. Why the leftwing take this & parrot talking points/name call shows they never watch will always puzzle me - it unfortunately taints the rest of us that lean left
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  • Zagnut wrote...
    News Chick comments "The students have a lot to learn about journalism".
    February 4, 2012 10:55 am
    Huh? They could go to work for the MSM right now! The hoax of global warming is one example of thousands where the MSM has spun information in a way to trick those who gullibly believe they are getting all the facts.
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  • Media Monkey wrote...
    Giving this story legs
    February 4, 2012 11:03 am
    Well, as these budding journalists may soon learn, the coverup is often worse than the crime. Will they allow a review of the raw tape? Would any journalist? If not, how will they defend their decision since the tape was produced "just for laughs" and not as a piece of editorial citizenship. If the raw tape is gone, where did it go? Who disposed of it? How to avoid a cover up: If the tape represents the "truth" of what you captured, own it. Don't try to play it off like it was some big joke - because then a demand for proof is almost automatic. This is real world stuff - it involves the managment of reporter tapes and notes, editorial controls and at the end of the day - a test of whether the "journalist" has the spine to admit a wrong, or stand behind his work product. Not easy stuff.
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  • TheNewsChick wrote...
    Hi Media Monkey!
    February 4, 2012 2:13 pm
    I'd love to see the raw video from this project.
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  • Chuck Gould wrote...
    Marvin Gaye said:
    February 4, 2012 2:20 pm
    "Believe half of what you see, son And none of what you hear"

    Remains good counsel many decades later. But since we "heard" it through the grapevine, should we believe the advice itself? Hmmm......

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  • FreeRange wrote...
    I got a laugh.....
    February 4, 2012 6:27 pm
    this video was funny and it was the news media that picked it up and ran it as fact. And just as a check i asked my kids all the questions they did just to make sure they were properly educated. :-)
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  • CH wrote...
    I agree with you anotherfencewalker . . . .
    February 4, 2012 6:33 pm
    like fox make up news, this clown is in the same boat. Anyone know a good talk/news station from noon the rest of the day?
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  • engineer lady wrote...
    I agree with Spuddog
    February 4, 2012 8:14 pm
    Some of these kids may have been making things up, but not all - the kids themselves sounded genuine. The fact that this school rates high and still has obviously well cared for children that sounded profoundly ignorant is spooky. I suspect that the film maker is getting pressured to backtrack. And the Breitbart videos, by the way, are valid - I've watched them in their entirety.
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