Off Beat
A Facebook page with the inside roasts has gone viral, and even strangers are loving it.
A photo of the “Core Four” East Longmeadow Class of 2007 reunion planners during their high school days. Cory Karalekas/Handout
June 9, 2026 | 10:40 AM
4 minutes to read
Four high school reunion planners from East Longmeadow have dropped the typical pleasantries and added an unusual caveat to the invitation for their 20th class reunion: RSVP “yes,” or be roasted mercilessly online.
“Tommy hit us with the: ‘Sorry guys, can’t make it… I live in Japan with my family and serve in the Navy, blah, blah blah,’” one recent Facebook post read. “Honestly it sounds responsible and respectable… but unfortunately for him, we’ve already decided this reunion is about guilt and sarcasm.”
The tongue-in-cheek trolling netted the East Longmeadow High School Class of 2007 nearly 3,000 likes on that post alone — more than 10 times the number of alumni in the graduating class itself. And social media engagement wasn’t the only silver lining; the reunion planners say the posts have also helped childhood friends reconnect and reminisce about growing up in their Western Massachusetts hometown.
“We’re on the search for everyone. We don’t want to leave anyone behind,” said planning committee member Charles “Nick” Shenk. “We want to invite all 233 people to our class, that’s our goal.”
“And shame them into coming if they say no,” classmate Cory Karalekas added with a laugh.
The reunion planning started after Shenk ran into a man in South Carolina who had coincidentally just returned from his 40th high school reunion in East Longmeadow. The so-called “Core Four” hit the ground running a little more than a month ago, with Karalekas on event coordination, Shenk working the phones for outreach, Giuliano Basile handling the backend logistics, and Susan Commisso serving as the voice of the Facebook page.
“There’s a lot of joking around,” Karalekas said. “Our [former high school] principal, [Richard Freccero], we were talking to him to see if we could post him, and we’re like, ‘We’re your favorite class, right?’ And he’s like, ‘You were the most entertaining class.’”
After all, she explained, sarcasm and good-natured ribbing have always been something of a love language for the East Longmeadow alumni.
“We pick on each other, and we always have,” Karalekas said. “I feel like it’s a Massachusetts thing, right? Like, if you’re not being teased by that person, do they really like you?”
When their first “no” RSVP trickled in, courtesy of one Nick Bean, they decided some light roasting was in order. A May 23 post paid homage to Bean, “the man who transferred into our class late, looking like a 32-year-old assistant gym teacher who accidentally wandered into homeroom with a clipboard and a dip cup.”
“I thought the Nick Bean one was flawless,” Commisso said of the roast. “It was punchy, and it was almost, like, not edited in a way where we thought that a bunch of random people were going to read it.”
From then on, no one was spared — not even Stephen Kinn, an Oklahoma-based Air Force pilot whose house was torn apart in a tornado.
“Stephen just hit us with, ‘Sorry guys, I can’t make it. A tornado destroyed my house,’” the May 31 post read. “Ha! Being homeless isn’t a good enough excuse STEPHEN… nice try!”
Commisso said the “Core Four” sent the writeup to Kinn for approval before posting, only for him to tease them in return for the “weak” roast.
“We’re keeping this a safe space, and we want to make sure it stays that way,” she explained. “So I feel like that’s the balance — whatever we’re roasting, is it going to hurt someone’s feelings or is it going to make them giggle?”
Memories shared on the East Longmeadow Class of 2007 Facebook read like inside jokes scrawled on the back pages of a high school yearbook (an infamous jelly doughnut vs. purse snafu comes to mind). But the roasts are the main draw for the page’s 3,300 followers.
“Everyone’s such a great sport about it, and the coolest part is some of these folks we haven’t communicated with each other in … over 20 years, and it was just like we picked right back up,” Basile said. “I mean each one of us is getting individual phone calls and text messages from random [classmates] that we … literally have not spoken to in 20 years.”
According to Basile, reunion planners have tracked down classmates all throughout the U.S. and scattered abroad, though more than half of the class remains unaccounted for.
“I was happy to get 100 people involved that were from our class,” Shenk said. “And the fact that after a few posts it grew to this craziness — it wasn’t wanted or expected, but now that it’s become this big outreach, we’re just accepting it.”
Shenk said he even spent a night excitedly answering messages from as far away as Australia, much to his wife’s chagrin.
“It’s just really nice to be on Facebook and see something positive and [something] people want to be a part of, because it’s not the deep, dark depths that is happening right now in the world,” Karalekas noted.
With the reunion itself still about a year away, she and the three other planners are keeping possibilities open for the ELHS Class of 2007 page.
“Whatever happens, happens,” Karalekas said. “We’re kind of up for anything, but I’m hoping it is a reminder to connect with people again.”
Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between.
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