Gabe Ferguson
Appearances
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
The low key, it should not have made like national news like that.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Like, yeah, it was definitely against the law, but it was just like crazy to us to be like, this is what Tate High School is making national news for. Like, be so real, everyone. It was so just absurd. I don't know if we didn't believe like, oh, it was fake at first, but it was like, this is just so dumb. Like, why would this girl do it? Like, it's not that deep.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
I mean, like, her looking at private information, like, health information and grades and stuff like that, and, like, hearing that she was, like, flaunting that to people, that's what people were really upset about. Like... Everyone kind of moved away from the homecoming part where like you actively invaded so many students' privacy. Like you have no clue what another student is going through.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
And to like flex that you know their private information is so incredibly immoral.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
It's like a bad representation of the community as well, which is like even more upsetting. But being in the Deep South meant everyone was in everyone else's business. It's a rural small town where like, it's not just the kids who know everything about everyone's business, but their parents know everyone else.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
So quite a few of them fed into that and like talked bad about like a 17, 18 year old girl as like a 40 year old person. Did I laugh? 100%. But it was still just like a, you are definitely a 40 something year old person writing hate and saying mean things about an 18 year old who hasn't seen the real world.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
So like there was small pockets of that, but I'd say just as a general community, it was that like disappointment in the situation. Um, I feel bad, like, not even low-key, like, I do feel bad that the girl got drugged the way she did. Like I said, not a single person trusts her. Like, I know, back at home.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
I think that it could have been a very great learning moment for the entire community to be like, okay, you guys, homecoming is not that serious. This girl literally risked her academic career and her, like, life over this. And to us, like, it just wasn't worth it. Like, it was not worth the plastic tiara.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
I don't want to say, like, oh, I was popular, because that sounds, like, so cringe to say about high school, but, like, I was friends with a lot of the popular kids. So, like, popular by association.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
She was friends with a lot of people, but it was kind of like a mean girl sitch. It was very pressured friends, where it was like, if you're not friends with her, why aren't you? There's got to be something wrong there. It's kind of like a red flag. So she knew pretty much every single person in her class because of that, because she was involved with student government.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
I had known her and her sister because all three of us had done student government in some way. Her sister was involved with the senior executive board whenever I was a junior doing student government. She was a year below me. Yeah, sorry, I just got my B-real notification. Let me do this really quick. I apologize.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
It's a whole week full of events where you dress up every day based off of the theme. It's a competition in between the classes, whether it's something like Cowboys versus prep. And then it would kind of all lead up to Friday, which we would have a pep rally that we planned where we all go out to the football stadium during school for about an hour, hour and a half.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
play some games, hype up the football team, like, kind of have that, like, competition between classes still.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
I would not even say, like, a third of the school voted. Like, it was a select amount because of the fact that, like, people didn't want to have to take their phones out and log on to a website, put their information in. Like, that took five minutes, but it worked to it.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
So they have all of the girls on homecoming court go out to the football field. They're wearing long gowns for this one. And them and their father or some other fatherly figure walk them out into the center of the field, and they line them up in a V formation, facing towards our home.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
They like get their extra little sash, their crown tiara, whatever, or like take a little ride around in a convertible car. And then the next night, usually Saturday night, you would have the homecoming dance.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Historically, it's usually banned students who win Homecoming Queen, which people wouldn't expect. But for some reason at Tay High School, they did. So it was like a shock is what I was told people didn't expect.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
If I'm going to be transparent, I was definitely one of the kids in the gossip wheel all the time. So usually it would start with the main popular group. We had like the football players, cheerleaders together. Then it would make its rounds into the agricultural kids. I was in that group, so then I would take it over to like the nerdy group.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
It was very, it was like a fast wildfire that was like pervasive to the rest of campus. And a lot of us had very large mouths with loose lips. I'd say quite a few of our teachers even were like knowledgeable about it.