Could you say that you feel secure with leaving your backpack unattended with your friends?

Ludlow students certainly couldn’t, as a developing trend called “Turtling” has started to spread throughout the student body and it’s happening in almost every class now. A trend that couldn’t be found or searched on anywhere else, originating solely from our lovely town of Ludlow.

“Turtling” is when a student takes another student’s backpack, empties the contents of the bag, flips the bag inside out, then puts their stuff back in and zips it up.

Most of the time, turtling occurs when a student goes to the bathroom, leaving their bags unguarded. When they come back, they find their bags “turtled” and find their friends looking at them funny.

While it might be annoying to get turtled, it’s very easy to fix your bag most of the time. You just reverse the process; taking about two minutes to fix.

For one student however, Junior Benjamin Goodreau, when turtled by friends, he had found that his bag had not only been turtled, but zip tied shut- making it so he couldn’t open his bag. Ms. Valentine was forced to use a knife and cut the zip ties off of his bag so he could fix his backpack.

When asked how he felt and if he was angry about what happened, Benjamin replied:

“Honestly, not at first. It was during my DLT so I had time to ‘un-turtle.’ What made me angry was that my bag was zip tied shut. What makes it annoying is when it is done right before class ends. When you have to walk in the hallway doing the infamous ‘nugget walk.’”

What is the “nugget walk,” you may be asking.

The nugget walk is when a student gets turtled right at the end of class, causing them to not have enough time to fix their bag. Since the straps are inside the bag after turtling, the turtle victim has to carry their bag in their arms until the next class.

Most students who get turtled seem to not mind it that much. As a lot of students who get turtled have just laughed it off and fixed their bags. However Benjamin pointed out:

“When you get turtled more than once—like 5 or 6 times like some other kids in my grade—is when you stop having a laugh and a more angry response.”

A sophomore whose a victim of serial turtling and gets turtled at least once a week, Alp Turk, was asked how he felt about the constant turtling:

“I find it funny if the person that turtles me is my friend, I actually know them, and if they help me fix it later, but if it’s some random person I barely know or they don’t help me at all I get a little annoyed.”

It seems that as long as the person who turtles a student is a friend of theirs and helps them fix it, students tend to be fine with the turtling. However, the line gets drawn for some students if it’s repetitive, at the end of class, or someone they don’t know well if a student does it to them.

As for someone who’s a common perpetrator of the turtling, Sophomore Aaden Rondeau, has a lot of experience in the field. Aaden is actually one of the people who have turtled Alp before. Not only once, but he’s turtled Alp a total of four times.

Aaden claims to only turtle friends, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same for others as Aaden confirms:

“I know few who turtle others randomly.”

So it seems even students who don’t have friends who participate in turtling are at risk now.

Even though Aaden has turtled multiple times in the past he says he’s “Never been caught by a teacher.” Even with a teacher in class, it’s very easy for this to happen to a student’s bag without the teacher even noticing.

Multiple students have said they’ve become more wary of their bags ever since these turtling incidents began. Some students are afraid to leave their bag unattended due to the trend.

Oftentimes turtling victims have more empty bags since it’s easier to turtle because they have less stuff inside the bag. However, you have higher chances to prevent turtling if you have a lot of things inside your bag.

The best solution we could possibly offer is to ensure that not only you keep your attention on your personal belongings and know who you’re surrounded by.