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JANUARY 8, 2026
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Wired Cats dig into Abenaki heritage ‘Zoombombs’ cause public meeting pivot
WCS robotics team preps for state championship
BY JASON STARR Observer staff
BY JASON STARR Observer staff The Williston Central School Lego robotics team was surprised to learn of the presence of an ancient Native American camp next to where they went to elementary school. And they’ve made it a centerpiece of their competition season. The Williston Wired Cats are a group of middle-schoolers who build and code robots to compete in Vermont’s FIRST Lego robotics league. They have qualified for the state championships taking place at GlobalFoundries in Essex Junction on Jan. 17. While Lego robotics competitions are known mostly for pitting robots against each other in timed tasks, they also challenge students to complete a service project in their communities around a certain theme. The Wired Cats were exploring ideas around this year’s theme — archeology — when they learned about a site near Allen Brook School where state archeologists have unearthed Abenaki artifacts. “The fact that there is something so old and so crucial to our history, and we didn’t know about it — we thought it’s something people should know about,” team member Isaiah Covey said. The University of Vermont conducted an archeological dig on the site decades ago as part of the permitting process for a highway that was never built. They uncovered Native American artifacts that suggest the presence of a fishing camp that would
Williston Wired Cats team members — Xander Goodchild, Liam Blackburn, Isaiah Covey, Emmit Lestage, Joshua Westman and Evan Brady — pose during practice Tuesday in the Williston Central School makerspace. OBSERVER PHOTO BY JASON STARR
have been on the Winooski River during the era of the receding Champlain Sea, more than 10,000 years ago. “We wanted to explore this more since we had no idea we went to school right by truly ancient history,” team member Xander Goodchild said. In addition to Goodchild and Covey, other team members are Liam Blackburn, Emmit Lestage, Joshua Westman and Evan Brady. The team is developing concepts for a monument of sorts to the history of the site. They are drawing up plans for interpretive signs and a gazebo that would welcome people to the site and educate about its history. Their project won first place
in December’s robotics league qualifier at Norwich University. They’ve consulted on the project with Chapin Kaynor, a local conservationist and planning commission member. Kaynor has raised awareness about the site in recent years, encouraging its use as an outdoor classroom at Allen Brook School, leading an effort to rid it of invasive species and honoring its Native American history. “Our missions are very aligned,” Kaynor said about his efforts and those of the robotics team, “I’m delighted that students are showing the way in furthering our understanding of this history to the land we call ‘Williston.’”
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The students continue to practice their project presentation and refine their robot coding ahead of the state championships, meeting in the WCS makerspace after school under the guidance of coach Allan Miller. Miller revived the school’s robotics program after a COVID-era hiatus when he joined the staff in 2021. He’s excited about how the team is coming together. “They are kids who didn’t know each other, and now are really good friends,” Miller said. “They work hard, and they share the load with each other. There is nobody pushing anybody around, and when someone runs into a wall, they say ‘I can help you see WIRED CATS page 3
During a December meeting of the Catamount Community Forest Management Committee, two unknown participants entered through the online video-conference platform Zoom. The fact that committee members and town staff didn’t recognize them was not an immediate cause for concern; this was a public meeting after all, with a link accessible to anyone posted on the town website. But when one began disrupting the meeting with incessant gibberish, it became clear that this was a case of “Zoombombing.” Video-conferencing of public meetings has been a ubiquitous practice for Vermont municipalities since 2020, when it began out of necessity during the COVID pandemic. The remote option has proven useful and convenient enough to remain in the years since. But it does expose public meetings to more bad actors. A selectboard meeting was disrupted with an inappropriate intrusion early in the Zoom era, and a couple of the town’s subcommittees have been victims in recent months. “I have heard of a couple more incidents recently of that sort of thing,” Town Manager Erik Wells said. As a result, the town’s volunteer subcommittees — such as the conservation commission, the planning commission and the Catamount Community Forest Management Committee — will be going to a more restrictive Zoom “webinar” format to conduct their public see ZOOMBOMB page 3
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