Mystery of Doyle Owl Disappearance Solved
The annual fight for the Doyle Owl took place this year on Friday, April 17. The Nation, a team composed of Beer Nation, Reed Kollege Shit Kollective (RKSK), a group of Chittick residents and friends who call themselves Weed Nation, and stragglers found in the scrum, emerged victorious with the Doyle Owl in the back of their Subaru. Several hours earlier, as the afternoon sun climbed higher in the sky, several students watched the Great Lawn, waiting eagerly to see who would arrive with the Doyle Owl. The 2025 Owl Fight victors, the Rugby Team, were no longer in possession of their spoils, nor were the thieves who stole it from them. Instead, the Owl was brought to campus by Solveig Gisslen ’26, Harrison Jones ’26, and Ansis Puris ’26. Through groundbreaking, never-been-seen-before reporting, the Quest traced the Doyle Owl through a series of heists, lies, and betrayal over the past year to uncover the truth.
During the Owl Fight of 2025, Lucy Coulter ’26 along with fellow Rugby Team members fought tooth and nail to drive away with the Doyle Owl and bring it to Barn House, where Rugby’s Simon Atwell ’25 lived at the time. When Atwell left the house over the summer, leaving the Owl in the hands of a completely non-Rugby house, Coulter and their roommates—Eleri Reyman ’26, Alex Dunn ’26, Emma Benson ’26, and, Nina Friedman ’26— along with co-conspirators Gisslen and Jones, devised a scheme to pull off a Doyle Owl heist. On the evening of September 10, Coulter received a phone call from Reyman and Dunn who both happened to be at the same concert as every member of Barn House. That night, the Barn House residents returned home from the concert to no Doyle Owl and a note that read “hoot hoot bitch we stole your loot.” At Haberdashery, where the roommate group lived, the Owl received a bubble bath before being chained down in the back yard.
The Doyle Owl remained at Haberdashery for many months. Dunn, a Haberdashery resident, said he began to hear whispers from the Owl. “I swear to God it began speaking to me,” he explained, “it wanted to be taken.” Not one to ignore messages from the Doyle Owl, Dunn brought together a “rag-tag group of individuals” to steal the Doyle Owl from his own friends and roommates. In the crew was David Murray ’27, the poster maker, Sophia Bigg ’26, the Brains, Henry McDonald ’27, the Gadgets-man, and James Aas ’26, for his charm. Marlow Dinsmore ’27, another member of the crew, “was there,” and Bigg’s roommate Ray Rogers ’26.
The crew planned the heist for the night of Spring/Fall Theme Reveal. As the school gathered in the Student Union to watch the reveal, Dunn and his gang of thieves successfully brought the Doyle Owl from Haberdashy to Dog House where Bigg and Rogers live.
Several days later Coulter, planning to show off to a friend from Lewis & Clark, pulled back the blue tarp in the backyard only to reveal the Doyle Owl was missing. In the coming days and weeks, “tears, terror,” rumors, and distrust swirled around SE Portland. An account titled “Hoot Fancy” appeared on Instagram, attempting to frame Jeremiah Mintz ’26, an amateur detective on Dunn’s tail, and Roxanna Wolff ’26. Dunn, who subsequently broke into Wolff’s house with Coulter to search for the Owl, has since taken credit for creating the account. Dunn also posted a fake count down and sent a text to implicate Barn House residents.
Months passed and discussions of the Doyle Owl’s whereabouts died down. As the 2026 Owl Fight approached, however, suspicion once again swirled around the campus. “You could really trust no one,” Coulter said. Glissen, a member of the original heist crew, was among those targeted by suspicion. “People were coming up to me in Commons asking me if I had it,” Glissen said, “I felt like I was being taunted.” The day before this semester’s fight, Glissen finally uncovered the truth when she spied McDonald texting Dunn in class. Alongside Jonah Griffin-Stolbach ’26, Dog House resident, and Samir Ashford ’26, Glissen slipped into the house. The next morning, Dunn’s rag-tag crew drove to Dog House to retrieve the Owl and bring it to campus. Instead of the Doyle Owl, however, they found a decoy composed of old birthday balloons with a message that read “the Owl has been returned to its rightful owner” scrawled across. “We had been played at our own game,” Dunn opined, “we cried on our way back.”
In the aftermath of Dunn’s betrayal “bridges have been burned.” “Why would my friend do this to me, why would my roommate do this to me?” asked Coulter. Benson, another Haberdashery resident blindsided by the betrayal, alongside Coulter and Reyman, chased down Dunn, tackled him to the ground, and slapped him. Dunn has also been the victim of “menacing” retaliatory pranks from Benson and Coulter.
After this year’s fight, the Owl was taken to the house of several of the Nation team members, Ren Raskin ’26, Theta Dal Cerro ’26, Aleta Findlay ’27, Poppy Baxter Game ’27, and Rugby member Ginger Priestman ’27. By Sunday, April 19, two days after the fight, the Owl had once again gone missing. The trail has gone cold for now, but the Quest’s internationally renowned investigative team will continue to doggedly pursue the whereabouts of the Doyle Owl.