Last Monday, the FBI detained Chester Stone ’25 as he was entering sixth period English. In front of his peers, Stone was pushed up against the wall, handcuffed, and read his rights. Stone was by all accounts a good student, albeit strange at times. As one of his classmates, Caedmon Sethupathy ’25 told The Tattler, “he would always bring this weird-looking skeleton into school on Halloween. We all knew he was a little bit off his rocker, but nobody suspected the extent of his crimes.” Sethupathy was of course referring to Stone’s sixty-four criminal charges, associated with his recent daring heist.
Over the past year, Stone planned and orchestrated a masterful burglary on Capitol Hill. Slipping undetected past nearly forty guards, he blew open an air duct and crawled inside for twelve hours until he reached the document safehouse. His mission was simple: to find, capture, and alter the American Declaration of Independence.
The police granted The Tattler permission to interview Stone, whose trial is ongoing. Speaking to his motives, Stone stated that “I saw it in the movie [National Treasure] and next thing I knew I was googling how to break into Capitol Hill. Every night when I fell asleep, I dreamed of gracing the document with my signature.” Despite the police’s best efforts, Stone was able to evade capture for nearly a week, during which he wrote his math homework in the Declaration’s margins and spilled coffee on “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” But by far his greatest transgression was crossing out John Hancock’s signature with a sharpie and signing his own name in its place. When asked why he chose to mock a vital founding father, Stone replied that “It’s nothing personal, my name just gotta be the biggest.” Authorities are still working to remove all markings from the precious national treasure but it is likely that Stone has forever altered the Declaration’s appearance.
The new “and improved” Declaration of Independence. Chester Stone
Although his initial motivations were primarily selfish, Stone soon realized that he had an immense opportunity to impact change for all people. Under the mistaken impression that all constitutional amendments are written into the Declaration, Stone decided to introduce a unique piece of tax legislation, arguing that “tax policy in the United States is deeply unfair. I mean, you return every shopping cart day in and day out and you don’t get even a penny off your bill!” Stone’s amendment institutes a fifty percent tax cut for all people who steal fewer than thirteen shopping carts per month. The Supreme Court has already voted to invalidate the amendment by a vote of eight to one. The lone dissenter was Justice Clarence Thomas, who has provided no rationale for his decision.
The FBI has released little information on the heist’s specifics, but Stone was happy to give The Tattler the inside scoop. “You see, I used a screwdriver to slowly open the ceiling grate and dropped down into the Declaration’s holding room. Then I hid in a vat of chemicals for several hours until the document was set to be cleaned. I jumped out of the formaldehyde, knocked out the cleaner and grabbed the Declaration.” Stone staunchly refused to provide any details of his escape out of a fear that “giving it away would ruin my upcoming book.” The vat of chemicals in which Stone was stationed is speculated to have completely altered his brain, as the school psychologist declared him “remedially intelligent” upon his reentry into IHS. In fact, Stone proudly showed the psychologist his stolen prize, which led her to send an immediate tip to the local police department.
However, Stone’s addled mind may not be entirely due to chemical poisoning. Teachers had been noticing a change in his character for several weeks prior to the crime spree. One English teacher shared that “Chester always had some problems but I drew the line when he claimed that the classroom stapler was ‘calling to him,’ and ‘demanding a sacrifice.’” Stone’s classroom antics grew increasingly erratic over the month of March, culminating in a three-day suspension after he removed every screw from the furniture in sixteen and a half classrooms. Despite this evidence of insanity, the exact nature of Stone’s psychological state remains unclear.
Despite his erratic and illegal behavior, Stone still believes his actions to be completely justified, a stance which is being assessed by a jury in his ongoing court case. Stone has opted to represent himself in court, stating that, “No lawyer could possibly hope to match the expertise I have acquired from binging all twenty-four seasons of Law and Order.” In his first hearing, he presented what he described to The Tattler as a perfect defense: “because the Declaration of Independence starts with the words, ‘We the People,’ it must be public property, and can therefore be edited by anyone.”
When asked why he felt it was his right to alter such a historic document, Stone confidently replied, “I was just taking what’s ours and making it better.” Legal experts have already pointed out the glaring flaw in Stone’s argument that “We the People” is actually the beginning phrase of the Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence. However, Stone dismissed this as a “minor detail,” and has continued to assert that his understanding of the founding documents is unparalleled.
While we wait for the final verdict, the question still remains: Was Stone a reckless idiot who defaced a national treasure, or a misunderstood visionary who rewrote history? Maybe both?
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