The new policy leads to more concise and less repetitive announcements
"Good Morning Monta Vista! Today’s historical thought of the day…" is something heard hundreds of times by most MVHS students by the end of their high school days. However, other than hearing "see School Loop for details," many students are beginning to tune out of announcements.
"If I hear something interesting, I’ll listen. But when [the announcements] start talking about boring stuff again, I just continue talking to my friends," junior Frances Jih saiid.
The ASB officers, along with deans of students Michael Hicks and Denae Moore, have also noticed that announcements were going beyond five minutes, resulting in loss of student interest.
"Announcements were becoming so repetitive that students and teachers were just tuning out," Moore said. "We really want to get back to the bare bones that need to be communicated to the student body on a daily basis."
"It became really annoying. When we heard the same announcement playing for three weeks, we decided it was time for a change," ASB secretary and senior Connie Wu said.
In response, ASB has established new regulations on the frequency announcements can receive airplay. Announcements can only be played a maximum of seven days, while those that only pertain to a small group of people such as a club can run two days. An exception will be given to new clubs that are less than two months old that are trying to gain more members. Larger, more established clubs can input their meeting locations and times in a slide show that plays before announcements. Clubs are also advised to use School Loop, flyers, and club promo day to gain publicity.
"Let’s say Octagon has Cure Cancer Cafe. Well, they don’t need two weeks solid of Cure Cancer Cafe announcements. They can put an announcement the Monday the week before," Moore said.
In addition ASB, Histech, and ROP have been working tediously during fifth period and after school to bring new computerized special effects to spice up daily announcements. Social studies teacher Christopher Chiang brought to their attention a new news broadcasting program that adds in transitions and live editing similar to CNN and other newscasts. Announcements would be run through a computer system where information such as club meeting times can be added and streamed at the bottom. However, plans were stopped after ASB saw a $10,000 price tag attached to the video software.
"It would have been really cool, and a great idea, but it just cost way too much money," Wu said.
However, video announcements are making a permanent comeback after months of switching between video and audio. This was due to the old room in the library used for announcements being converted into office space. After ASB lost the room, ASB and Histech have set up announcements in the old ASB room, located upstairs in the student center. Histech and ASB expect to get the building wired for cable to transmit announcements to the whole school with the new policy in place by the end of January.
