Originally Printed in the Jan 2025 Issue of The Jaguar Journal
BAC and blood splatters. Tall clock towers and a bashed-in mannequin. A dead girl and some dead guys make up the content of two unconventional finals. The first final is the Law and Justice final, a mock trial taking place in the downtown Bothell City Hall. And unlike other finals that require pen to paper, the Law & Justice Final, emphasized by Law and Justice teacher, Casey Kellogg, is more hands-on. “The hope was that we’re able to create an experience that students can walk away with saying that they were able to do and would take pride in for the remainder of their life,” Kellogg said. “The trial won’t just be about how much [a student] has learnt, but also what [a student] can walk away with. Hazing. Manslaughter. Negligence. These are not topics that are discussed at all in learning environments.”
The last three crimes refer to Chris Archer, the defendant. The defendant is a person who is accused of committing a crime, and for the trial of 5th period vs 2nd period, Eleane Rocher Chandard is cross examining (questioning) the defendant. “I’m the prosecution, so I’ve been focusing on proving [the defendant] guilty,” Chandard said.
In this mock trial, the actor that plays Chris Archer is being tried for second degree manslaughter, hazing, and furnishing of liquor to minors. The first count is the most important, concerning 18-year-old Milan Jackson, the victim of the case. She fell 26 feet off of a clock tower on her college campus while completing a “pledging activity” in order to gain acceptance into the Phi Gamma fraternity. “I do believe it is our purpose in education to pull back the veil and have conversations that could be difficult…I don’t want a high school student to leave the campus without at least one adult having the conversation about the realities of alcohol and hazing,” Kellogg said. The seriousness of this case is not lost on these classes, but they still find the case morbidly entertaining.
While some try to solve crimes, others prefer to create them. In Mr. Wilson’s Forensics class, students experiment with blood and styrofoam heads to create crime scenes from their wildest dreams. “The first part is that the crime needs to make sense. For example, blood spatter type needs to be consistent with the type of murder, hair evidence needs to be in the correct location in the crime scene (if there’s a fight, it could be in the victim’s hand).” Wilson also discussed his favorite part: “My favorite part is watching the students come up with really detailed crime scenes that are difficult to solve.”
Students also expressed the same enjoyment for the class. “One of my roles in the Forensic final is analyzing the blood stain patterns created by someone else. It includes things such as the direction of the blood, the angle on which the blood landed on the surface and to classify the blood’s velocity,” said Mizuki Mierau, a student in the Forensics class. Her and her group are creating a crime scene of their victim, creatively named Vicky Tim. Her favorite part of the final is “spraying cow blood on butcher paper”, furthered also by her interest in “criminal investigation in law.” To her, Forensics is another way to explore the career path of law and criminal justice.
All in all, these finals help students learn and create in ways they’ve never done before. While learning about real life jobs and how they work, they also learn about real life situations and how dangerous the world can be. Both these finals are for classes that are especially explorative when it comes to careers. For some students, these are classes they take for fun. For some, it leaves students with accomplishments to last them a lifetime.