There are 24 bells in the school day, according to secretary Melissa Law. Everyone knows what they sound like—usually. But for a few days now, several students have noticed the strange, slightly fried tone every time they go off.

The cause? Some of the hardware is failing because of wear and tear due to normal aging. “We’ve ordered some new amps,” said Law. “There’s a large box in the mail room so [maintenance] have been working back there.”

The issue is mostly affecting the warble, which is the sound played at the beginning and end of every period. The administration considered changing the tone, but that would take a lot of work: they’d have to individually change every single of the aforementioned 24 bells.

Although the bells have been worked on for a week, there’s not really a timeline for when they’ll be fixed, as the people from Blade, the company the school is working with, can only work after hours. “They did come [during the day], and that was the day we ended up not having any bells for a couple periods,” Law explained. Also, Blade is in Indianapolis, meaning the workers have to drive an hour to Bloomington every day after school ends.

Still, that hour drive is almost certainly less painful than the 20 minutes it took five other staff members and me to count how many times the bell rings in a day before admitting defeat and asking Melissa Law instead.