South Brunswick High School (SBHS); an average sized school in a quaint but picturesque seaside town. The school strives to develop the best students they can with their motto, “set the standard.” This school excels in athletics, with emphasis on football in particular. Students feel pride for their mascot, the cougar. Yes, this does describe South Brunswick High School… North Carolina.
Most people in this school are probably already aware that there are two South Brunswick Highs. Anyone who has tried to look up “South Brunswick High School” has run into the same problem: they have to specify which school they mean. Otherwise, the other school may show up first on their Google search page. Usually Googling inconvenience is the most harm that has come out of the identical names, but there have been other instances where the schools got mixed up more substantially.
According to Mrs. Lisa Manganello, the SBHS NJ librarian, a book from SBHS NC was accidentally sent here in December 2024. While she was a bit uncertain on exactly how this happened, Mrs. Manganello figured that somebody mistakenly returned the book to the public library, and “when they saw the stamp that said South Brunswick High School library, they dropped it off here.” At first glance, the book seemed like it was from SBHS NJ, but when looking a little closer, Mrs. Manganello saw that “the stamp on their book referenced North Carolina.” Because of this, she decided to contact the other librarian and send the book back to its rightful home.
This was not the only incident where Mrs. Manganello dealt with confusion regarding the other school. “When I call a vendor, one of our database companies, they always ask me which school I’m calling for,” said Mrs. Manganello. It turns out, getting the right school is important when it comes to vendors, as each school pays a different amount for their databases. “[SBHS NC] has been billed for our database, which actually works out in our favor, because we’re bigger, so we pay more. So usually that’s what trips everybody up, that we have suddenly gotten a very small bill instead of a very big bill.”
When I contacted Mrs. Heather Woody, the librarian from SBHS NC, it turns out she has some stories of her own regarding interactions with our school. In SBHS NC, they also distribute Chromebooks to students. One time, a child was having difficulty operating their device. Their parent, angry with the school, decided to give them a call. At first, Woody was confused. She had no clue who the child in question was or what was wrong with her device. Eventually she figured out that the parent meant to call SBHS NJ. The other interactions Woody had with this school were much more positive. She once took a trip up to New York and passed by our school on the way. A few years before, Brunswick County, NC had to close in the aftermath of a bad hurricane, so SBHS NJ sent the school some supplies.
Despite the two South Brunswick Highs overlapping in multiple spaces, the two schools could not be more different. SBHS NC has a population of 1,182 students, which is smaller than SBHS NJ’s population of 2,728 students. SBHS NC is in the town of Southport, which is in Brunswick County. Brunswick County is how the school got its name; there are two other high schools, East and West Brunswick High school, and SBHS NC is naturally south of both of them. The three Brunswick high schools were founded around the same time.
Unlike New Jersey, North Carolina districts are organized by county. It is odd to imagine that happening in New Jersey. Having a combined Middlesex county school district would merge the districts of South Brunswick, North Brunswick, East Brunswick, Edison, Carteret, Piscataway, Edison, Metuchen, and more. It is unclear why New Jersey schools are not organized by county, but the abnormally high population density in the state would certainly make it difficult to organize schools that way. Middlesex county is less than a third of the size of Brunswick County, but has over five times the student population (The United States Census Bureau states that Middlesex County is 309 square miles, and there are over 66,182 students enrolled in their schools. Meanwhile, Brunswick County is 1,050 square miles and educates 12,944 students.). Due to these contrasting population densities, the area surrounding SBHS NC is quite different from the area surrounding SBHS NJ. The National Center of Education Statistics has locale rankings to classify the areas that schools are in. SBHS NC is considered to be in a distant rural area. SBHS NJ, on the other hand, is a large suburban area.
After all the comparisons, one question remains: which school came first? This article is called “the Doppelganger School”, implying that SBHS NJ came first. That is up for debate. SBHS NC was founded in 1972, while SBHS NJ was founded twelve years earlier. This seems like an easy win for New Jersey. However, the current SBHS NJ building was built in 1997, and before them, the building was in Crossroads South Middle School. On the other hand, while SBHS NC has seen renovations, it has always been in the same location. So does that make SBHS NC the original school?
It depends on which factors give a high school its identity. Is it the building? But buildings are renovated and expanded. Is it the name? But even in a few years a school can have a drastically different layout and culture. Is it the students? The students leave in four years. The teachers? Eventually they leave too. If in a decade this school was renovated and had an entirely different set of staff and students, would it still be the same school? Because there is no objective answer to these questions, it is impossible to say which school is really the doppelganger.
At the end of the day, the name of a school is just that. What gives this South Brunswick High School its meaning is so much more. It stands apart through its academics, sports, clubs, music, culture, friendships, shared memories, pride in the Viking, and a diverse set of students that continue to make it special year by year. The fact that a school with the same name is different in every other way goes to show that there is no school quite like this South Brunswick High School.
