Pizza was supposed to bring us together. Instead, it tore us apart.
What started as a controlled experiment to determine the best pizza around the Deerfield area quickly took a dark turn when one pizza met a tragic and untimely demise on the Kendall building’s basement floor. The culprit? Still at large.
The typically quiet and peaceful—well, if one has their headphones on—Scroll News Room erupted in finger-pointing, baseless accusations and defensive claims as board members scrambled to piece together the events leading up to the crime.
The Procedure
The experimental design was foolproof and laboriously crafted to eliminate all biases as the rigorous standards of authentic pizza-science demands. The experiment was conducted by facilitators Associate Editor Josie Kalish ’26, Digital Managing Editor Karen Park ’26, and Associate Editor Caylah Yang ’26.
We ordered one pizza from three local pizzerias through Deerfield Academy’s prized food delivery service—Doordash. The three pizzas were labeled Treatment A (Village Pizza), Treatment B (Georgio’s Pizza), and Treatment C (Magpie), to maintain anonymity and thereby guarantee an integrious process in our ambitious endeavor.
The purpose: ask each subject their favorite slice out of the three to determine the store with the greatest proportion of votes and arguably the “best” local pizzeria. The experiment followed a Matched Pairs Design, where each subject tested all three treatments in a randomized order, determined by a random number generator. To further preserve the integrity of the process, we conducted it as a Double-blind experiment, meaning neither the subjects (the Scroll Board members) nor the statisticians (us) knew which slice came from what store until after the experiment.
Pre-Disaster
As journalists, our commitment to objective and ethical reporting made us the ideal candidates to evaluate and determine the best pizza Deerfield’s Doordash has to offer. We report nothing but the truth.
For a while, everything went as anticipated. Board members participated enthusiastically, delivering complex, insightful, and persuasively reasoned reflections of crusts, grease levels, and tomato sauce.
The kind and definitely-not-dictatorial Deerfield Scroll Editor-in-Chief Anna Guerrini ’25 affirmed her enjoyment of all pizzas before endorsing Treatment A (Village Pizza) as the best “Saturday-night pizza.” She declared, “the crust… fire… that was what sold it.” What exactly makes a pizza “Saturday-night” material? A mystery, considering this pizza tasting occurred on a Monday night.
Managing Editor Yoonsa Lee ’25 offered a more complex analysis. She stated, “Pizza C is what I’d go to if I wanted to Doordash a meal, but for a Saturday night, I’d agree with Anna.” Ultimately, Lee cast her vote for Pizza C (Magpie), citing her reasoning: “I’m not the biggest fan of tomato sauce.” A daring take, considering both Pizza A and C contained tomato sauce, an essential component to pizza.
Meanwhile, Associate Editor Katherine Ni ’26 stated confidently, “Cheese is the best because it’s the lightest and least greasy.” A compelling argument—except that all of the pizzas in question were cheese pizzas. When asked when she would ideally consume the pizza, Ni delivered a revelation: “Probably like when I’m hungry.”
Everything was in place to ensure a controlled experiment and a resultant objective conclusion. No one could have foreseen what would happen next…
Crime Scene Evaluation
Crime: Pizza Murder
Time of Pizza Death: 8:45 p.m.
Date: January 20th, 2025
Once unified under the noble pursuit for the ultimate cheese pizza, the Scroll room descended into pandemonium and cacophony. Pizza was scattered across the floor, rendered dust-covered and inedible. Each board member attempted to clear their own name while implicating others. We are still trying to get a clear picture of what happened but here’s what we know so far:
Upon accusation, Associate Editor John Woo ’26 vehemently denied any complicity and passionately declared “I did not touch it, I did not touch it, no part of my body was in contact with the fallen pizza.” His overly defensive pleas seemed to have had a counter-productive result, prompting Associate Editor John Liu ’26 to insinuate guilt. Among Woo’s claims of innocence, Liu interjected “a real man takes accountability.”
Fueling the fire, Liu began pointing fingers seemingly arbitrarily. He claimed, “Karen [Park ’26] knocked it over, just cause… I don’t know?” Moments later however, he accused Ni, reasoning, “Katherine’s hand is more… you know what I’m saying.” No, John, we do not. Liu’s accusation prompted Ni to fire back an accusation of bias.
Tensions in the Scroll room continued to rise and derailed the experiment entirely. The hope for a unified Scroll community crumbled and pizza politics took over.
Who caused the fall? Who can be trusted? And most importantly, will the Scroll community ever recover? Amidst the uncertainty surrounding this event, one thing remains clear: January 20, 2025, will go down in Scroll history as a tale of betrayal.
We cannot disregard the numerous biases that may prevail. Firstly, the subjects did not comprise the entire Scroll Board—with a slight lack of time and preliminary planning, the experiment was merely conducted with voluntary response sampling on the eager pizza-craving members that showed up. Thus, we cannot draw precise conclusions regarding the best pizza on behalf of the board as a whole. In addition, due to ambiguous miscommunication with Magpie, we got a margherita pizza instead of a cheese pizza. Did subjects choose Treatment C for their purest appreciation for the pizzeria itself or were they merely picky pesto-lovers? The mystery will forever remain concealed.
Because of the superficial data collected, we cannot conclude that Magpie is the pizzeria our Scroll members would really choose to enjoy on a Saturday night after all. However, the most detrimental flaw of the experiment was John Liu’s malicious transgression as he deliberately consumed water after testing Treatment A—breaking the paramount control variable of our meticulous procedure. True science, after all, demands sacrifices—and a willingness and compliance from both the statisticians and all subjects to do whatever it takes in the name of integrity.