At 8:15 p.m. on Thursday night, Staples students began debating a single question regarding the color of a dress. Is it blue and black, or is it white and gold?

Their twitter feeds are buzzing, group chats are blowing up and countless texts are rolling in, all circulating around this question.

Some are completely sure that the infamous dress is blue and black, while others are convinced it is white and gold.

Alumnus Connor Hardy ’14, like many others, is baffled.

“I haven’t the slightest clue how people perceive that photo as the dress being gold and white,” he said. “I am now a college educated individual, and I stand by my argument when I say that the dress is definitively blue and black.”

While Hardy sees it as blue and black, Bonya Kleiman ’16 was not so sure.

“The first time I saw it I thought it was neither. I saw that it was blue and gold,” Kleiman admitted. “However, the second and third time I saw it, I thought it was blue and black and could not see how anybody else could see any other color combination.”

Annabelle Porio ’15 is also experiencing changes of color and mind.

“I saw white and gold at first then I started to see blue and black and then it went back and forth,” she admitted. “I think this hype is crazy but also not unreasonable because it’s totally 50/50 for who sees what.”

Even though Phoebe Mendelson ’17 is sure that she sees white and gold, she finds it very “frustrating not being able to convince the person you’re talking to of what you’re seeing since they are seeing something different,” she said.

With so many people seeing so different things, other questions are being raised.

Is it the same picture of the dress or are there different ones circulating? And what does it say about you if you see white and gold and not blue and black, and vice versa?

Some Staples students have read on various forms of social media that the dress is a science experiment to prove that emotions and events affect a person’s per colors. However, an explanation from a reliable source has yet to be found.

Regardless of whether it is blue and black or white and gold, the photo is swarming social media.

Kleiman believes that “the hype happened because of the realization that people can see completely different things in one photo.”