No one knows what’s going to be posted next. While some people laugh at Welcome To East’s posts, others are targeted by the joke.
Welcome To East is a student contribution Instagram page, created in Dec. 2020 with posts ranging as far back as Oct. 21, 2021. It posts photos and videos of East that vary from bathroom “art” to school fights, and has over 1,000 followers.
“[Welcome To East] was created to document all the random things that happen around East, whether it be the graffiti or the good things that happened,” the creator of Welcome To East said in an anonymous interview.
However, Welcome To East has elicited mixed responses from the East community, as attention from the page can come with negative effects.
“I think the Welcome To East page is funny, but sometimes it goes a little too far. Sometimes [it posts] people minding their own business,” junior Alex Arrasmith said. “I would count this as cyberbullying.”
Posts have featured a student being arrested, a student being pantsed and a student picking his nose, all of which have since been deleted.
According to Welcome To East’s creator, this was not the page’s intent.
“We’re not trying to make anyone feel bad or get bullied,” the creator said. “I’ve always tried to keep it like, ‘You DM me, and I’ll deal with the problem.’”
But regardless of intent, there have been damaging consequences that have come from Welcome To East’s posts.
In May 2021, a photo of Dominic Koplar was posted on the page. Koplar is an East civics teacher and lacrosse coach, who was in the middle of helping a student when the photo was taken from behind. After the first, at least five other photos of Koplar were posted that are still up today, although others have been deleted.
“It felt like harassment,” Koplar said. “To be sarcastically sexualized just felt like a step out of bounds, a step too far.”
Koplar implemented a no-phones policy in his classroom, but the photos didn’t stop there. Photos taken of him on his lunch break, from balconies and windows, also appeared on the page.
“It was disappointing for me to see and have to read the comments that other people in this building made to be edgy, to get internet laughs, to pick fun. These were people who I knew… people who I felt like, quite honestly, were better than that.”
And despite Welcome To East’s policy that people are able to message the page for the removal of any photos, Koplar was not able to get the posts taken down. It was only after a group of students messaged the account that some of the photos were removed.
“I had reached out to the creators from an account… to basically tell them that this was cyberbullying and harassment… that they didn’t have a right to my person’s right to my image, my likeness. I asked them to take all of the posts that featured me down and they neither responded nor took those down.”
According to Koplar, the impacts of the posts on Welcome To East stretched into the educational environment as well.
“Classrooms are supposed to be open, safe, free spaces to express a dialogue [and] to workshop ideas. And when you have to constantly… think, ‘Is this going to get captured and broadcast to the world in a mocking and picking way?’ [It] had a negative influence on myself, but also I think the classroom in general,” Koplar said. “For that to live in the back of your head and [to] feel like you can’t engage with students who genuinely need help… was really disheartening.”
Beyond personal experiences, some worry that Welcome To East may also be impacting school reputation.
“I think that it shows what the school doesn’t want people to see, but it also only shows those things, so it doesn’t give a full view of the school,” junior Abby Arbuckle said.
Photos of police cars and fights have appeared on the page. A story about the events of May 5, 2022, features a slide talking about a gun being drawn on school grounds, which did not happen. A Nov. 22 post shows a cigarette on bathroom floor with the hashtag “#ciggarettsaftersex” and pictures of bathroom destruction and phallic graffiti are common.
The publicity that comes from being posted on Welcome To East impacts the people it features. What some see as joking comments, others see as damaging mockery.
“What you lift up and give a voice to matters in this day and age. It can be as simple as double clicking a picture to like it, but you’re giving it traction,” Koplar said.
Photo by Avery Tortora/The ECHO
