Oil found under Discovery building at Samo
Head Cheese, Guest Writer
Not to be outdone by cross-town rivals, Beverly Hills High School, whose campus has boasted a flower-decorated oil derrick for years, Samo now has its own in the Discovery Building. Students and staff discovered a massive oil gusher last week when it erupted over campus at 12:30 a.m., turning the Olympic parking lot into an oozy free-for-all with people stockpiling oil in the face of rising gas prices.
“Yeah, it was crazy. I was getting into my mom’s car when I heard a big explosion, and oil started spewing from the top of the Discovery Building. At first I thought it was rain, but then I remembered that rain had been forecast for that day, so I knew it couldn’t have been raining. And then I heard, ‘Eureka!. Let’s pack up the truck and move to Beverly.’ It was kind of a mess. Plus, my new converse high tops were totally wrecked, so that’s a bummer,” Joe Freshman (’26), who had been attending rehearsals for Legally Blonde in Barnum, said.
When news of the oil gusher spread throughout the community, people rushed to the campus on their electric bikes and in golf carts with Pyrex containers hoping to gather some of that black gold they might use to fill their car tanks, tanks that have been empty since gasoline prices have skyrocketed in recent weeks.
Freshman’s mother, Rhoda Freshman, was one such oil prospector who broke out the glass containers she was planning to bring to Recontained the next day to fill up on sulfate-free shampoo and body lotion.
“It was a stroke of luck. Fortunately, I was prepared with my reusable containers and shopping bags, so I could scoop up some of that Texas tea. Gasoline prices are insane right now. It was either paying for yoga sessions or buying gas. I didn’t really have a choice. I have been playing the gas game this entire week, pushing how far I could drive my car on the last gallon of gas. And if there’s one thing I do know: you can never win the gas game,” Rhoda Freshman said.
Once the frenzy slowed and the cleanup crews moved in to contain the spill, the community bombarded SMMUSD with questions. Many on campus were wondering how they hadn’t seen the signs before that the Discovery Building wasn’t just any building.
“There have been some rank smells emitting from the building since we moved in. I kept telling them it didn’t smell like a backed-up sewer system,” Joe Teacher said.
District documents and an Environmental Protection Agency report released to The Samohi revealed that the strong odors were indeed fugitive emissions of benzene, methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) coming from the oil extraction process.
District officials assured parents, students and staff that there was never any threat to the safety of those people who held their breaths for five hours that day and continued to wear masks as strongly recommended by the SMMUSD COVID-19 compliance team.
In a statement released Friday, SMMUSD Superintendent Dr. Ben Drati announced that the oil well was a part of the ongoing expansion of the AP Capstone program and Project Lead the Way.
“It seemed like a natural fit. This way we can give students that real-world experience of draining valuable resources from the earth. We can now offer hands-on oil-well engineering to complement our new CTE/AP Capstone classes in petroleum engineering,” the statement said.
“I am really excited about the program. This seems like a sustainable solution to the need for more project-based learning on our campus,” new Team Marine Advisor and Environmental Science Teacher Rex Tillerson said.
School officials are also looking forward to the increased revenue from the sales of the oil. Samo Principal Dr. Antonio Shelton has been lobbying the district for money for Samo programs and had finally decided to mandate participating in weekly bake sales to augment staff salaries.
“We have been wanting to find a way to fund our community garden and solar panel replacement and recycling programs, and now we have the bubbling crude to do it,” Shelton said.
