On Aug. 11 and 12, students arrived at MVHS for Running of the Bulls, expecting it to be similar to last year’s. However, this year administration altered several aspects of Running of the Bulls, including the dates of locker assignments and the location of the event.

These changes were made in an effort to streamline the start-of-school process for students, and although some students were not aware of them beforehand, the changes have been mostly well-received.

Locker Assignments

According to Assistant Principal Mike White, locker assignments will be assigned during the first and second weeks of school, instead of at Running of the Bulls, so that students can pick their lockers based on the locations of their classes. Since schedules are handed out on the first day of school, some students never use their lockers because they are too far from their classes.

“You don’t use it because [for example] as a freshman, all your classes are in the C building, and all lockers as a freshman are in the A building,” White said.

Now students will be given more flexibility in choosing the location of their lockers. Although junior Ada Chen believes that the change will help students, she also noticed the discontent that it caused among the juniors.

“People were pissed because they thought that the freshman and sophomores would get it first,” Chen said.

ID Cards

According to AP Secretary Deb Mandec, this year ID cards were not given to students due to a technical error. MVHS had already inputted students’ birth dates into the card printer’s database months before Running of the Bulls, but when printing the first ID card, the photography company, Lifetouch, discovered that the dates had been lost. Because of this error, Lifetouch had to individually enter students’ birth dates into the database, which took an excessive amount of time.

After printing thirty seniors’ cards, Lifetouch decided to stop printing because in addition to the system error, the printer also had problems.

“The yellow on the card was printing out ugly gold and the pictures were coming out fuzzy,” White said.

According to senior Janice Huang, the change caused some confusion in the line, but most seniors did not worry too much about the change.

“I don’t think it makes much of a big difference,” Huang said. “It’s not like we need our ID cards for a while.”

Like the locker assignments, ID cards will be handed out on the first week of school, and photo retakes will happen in the office after students receive their cards.

Location Change

MVHS decided to use the cafeteria instead of the field house to hold Running of the Bulls, mostly because it is air-conditioned. Other factors in the decision included the cafeteria’s proximity to the office and its size.

“We haven’t debriefed it with the staff yet, but I think that everybody liked it,” White said. “It worked for us in terms of location and space.”

Despite its benefits, White noticed that some students went to the wrong location although the Running of the Bulls packet included a letter with the event’s updated location, and White had told the Link leaders to spread the message.

“It was funny because all the seniors still lined up at the field house when I got here,” White said. ”They obviously did not read the letter.”

Overall Response

Even though the event had some unexpected changes, Huang still believes that Running of the Bulls was a success.

“I think it went pretty well although the wait process was pretty long, but you can’t help it,” Huang said. “Inside, everything went pretty smoothly, and the actual process didn’t actually take that long.”

Correction (Aug. 18 at 4:32 p.m.): Students will be assigned lockers on the first and second weeks of school.