GRASS VALLEY, Calif. — Grass Valley Charter School serves some 400 pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students. Like many small schools, GVCS relies on fundraisers to afford any outside-of-the-budget items, including any upgrades.
That’s where the school’s all-volunteer non-profit foundation Grass Valley Charter School Foundation steps in.
"We are the arm of the school that can raise extra dollars to provide additional funding for items that regular budget wouldn't afford," explained Wendy Willoughby, the foundation’s president and parent of a student at the school. Willoughby added that the school's library and multi-purpose room are in need of upgrades.
An important annual fundraiser hosted by the GVCSF was scheduled for this Saturday, at the nearby Nevada County fairgrounds, but a tweet from former FBI director James Comey changed everything.
On April 27, Comey participated in the Twitter trend du jour, in which people list five jobs they’ve had alongside the hashtag #FiveJobsIveHad or #FiveJobsIHad.
Within a day, conspiracy theorists had sunk their hooks into Comey’s tweet. There are people, Twitter accounts and websites devoted to deciphering and decoding the tweets of those in power, looking for meaning when – especially in this case – there is none.
The conspiracy led people to believe that the small charter school was the target of something about as unclear as the conspiracy itself. What is clear is where the conspiracy began — QAnon, a far-right online poster that attempts to link obscure happenings with a deep state conspiracy aimed at taking down President Donald Trump.
Rearranging some letters of the hashtag, one post connected the trending hashtag to “Five Jihad(s)?”
The theory also took the first letter of each of the five jobs Comey listed:
- Grocery store clerk
- Vocal soloist for church weddings
- Chemist,
- Strike-replacement high school teacher
- FBI director, interrupted.
That’s GVCSF. In a one-in-a-million stroke of bad luck, that uncommon acronym also happens to match up with the Grass Valley Charter School Foundation.
As that obscure analysis of Comey’s tweet spread its conspiratorial tendrils through those aforementioned corners of the Internet, this little Grass Valley school’s all-volunteer foundation started fielding a flood of alarming questions, emails, comments and calls.
It became apparent, looking at how the conspiracy was spreading on social media platforms, “that this was not going away – certainly not before the festival," Willoughby said.
Fellow Grass Valley Charter School mom Kathy Dotson is Willoughby's fundraising event co-producer.
"Some of the tangent theories that people were starting to come up with that had to do with the festival, that had to do with our community, that had to do with the school," Dotson said."It was insanity. Total insanity."
Once the pair learned about this ballooning conspiracy theory, they told the school district and law enforcement.
“We had to take it seriously," Dotson said. "The tweets themselves – there are thousands.”
Working with the school district and law enforcement, Willoughby and Dotson decided to cancel the event.
"There was no real threat to – and our law enforcement said the same – to our event or our school," Willoughby explained. "Even though their theories don't hold any evidence or fact, we know from current and recent events that, in fact, what these theories do do is embolden unstable individuals to take action and, most often, dangerous action, and we felt we could not take that risk."
The fundraiser’s proceeds “were to go to different projects for our school, including an interior facelift for our multipurpose room.”
Willoughby said this would have been the third consecutive year of this fundraising event, called the Blue Marble Jubilee. In past years, it has netted the school more than $20,000, and they were aiming for $25,000 this year, with 1,500 attendees.
"And so not only have we lost that, but the real heartbreak is in that loss for the kids," she said, adding that the students create art for an auction there, volunteer at the event and enjoy it as an end-of-school-year party.
On top of that, the foundation had already spent some $10,000 on the Jubilee, since it was less than two weeks away at the time of cancellation.
However, Willoughby said, "we live in an amazing, wonderful generous community, and most of our business sponsors have converted their sponsorship dollars into donations." So while the foundation is currently still in the hole, it's not as much as $10k.
“We will have to hold on some of those (school improvement projects) until we’re able to raise some more money," Willoughby said.
People can still donate on the fundraiser’s website.
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