If you have been at MVHS long enough, then you would know that this school loves competition. This year, “Matador of the Month” was replaced by “Mr. or Miss Matador,” a competition which, according to School Loop, is intended to nominate and select “an exemplary Monta vista student who always strives to make MV a better place.” The replacement was put in place because ASB felt that the “Matador of the Month” competition received little attention.

So did it succeed? Well, not quite.

While “Mr. or Miss Matador” did gain more recognition than “Matador of the Month,” mainly because nominations happened through a form in office, they still have to work on how they promote the event.

This year, the competition received only 84 nominations from a student body of 2,519. Nineteen percent of the responses came from freshman, 18 percent from sophomore, 14 percent from juniors and 49 percent from seniors, who made up a large portion of the responses. After clearing out quite a few jokes, ASB chose the winner based on the number of nominations and reasons for nomination, which ranged from “extremely friendly to everyone at school” to “always dresses up in unique costumes” to “he’s a bo$$.”

The competition should be publicized more in order to garner more responses and votes. ASB is having a contest of its own in this sense: one to attract more attention for the activities they set up. After all, many students do not pay attention to games or other activities unless they are pushed in their faces or offered incentive — oftentimes free food. The lack of student involvement with the competition translates to the  competition’s purpose, to choose a remarkable student from the student body, not being met because ASB is forced to choose from an inadequate pool of nominees. Only when the competition has a healthy amount of responses, can it increase in validity and its results be more justified.

However, there are those who think that we do not need to spend time restructuring something so trivial as a contest.

But they are wrong. It matters to ASB, who needs their activities to avoid fizzling out, like the “Matador of the Month.” Because once their activities gain more recognition, their other activities might also gain more attention, which will lead to higher participation overall. In other words, when more people vote, everyone wins — those chosen, ASB, and a more spirited student body.