RTM (Week 4): Swing | Problems at Alpha

Swing
Last week I had gotten upset with myself because of a small thing, and it ended up affecting me way more than it should have. I had intended to send a birthday message to person and when I searched for the name, it ended up bringing up another one. For whatever reason, seeing the name set me off and I grew moody and sulky.

Obviously I've gotten over it, but I am still disappointed in myself for dropping my guard. However on a more joyful note, Monday has been great to me for once, and I feel better about myself. In a metaphorical sense, I'm on a swing and currently on a high. I have been volatile as of late, but hopefully I'll even out sometime soon.

Problems at Alpha
Coming out from elementary school, my ideal high school was Burnaby North. My ambitious eyes were set on a large and renowned school, where I would strive to claw and scrape my way to the very top. However, the hand of fate had a different path for my life. One way or another, I ended up at Alpha. Here, I have not only come to change my thoughts of North, but have even come to love and appreciate the school in its entirety.

But it is a love-hate relationship.

While I hold the people, teachers, and atmosphere dear to myself, what Alpha severely lacks is school pride and spirit. To make things worse, there is not a whole lot to be proud of. Alpha has always been terrible at promotion and social media. The largest problem is nobody knows the fundamentals of advertising. Frankly, posters advertising clubs and events are seldom designed in a visually and logically appealing format, announcements are never heard, the television systems are not being used (a true shame), and there is little to no social media presence. Actually, while I'm at it, I may as well underline fully the roots of all these problems.

Design
During my three years at Alpha, I have seen 3 attractive, professional, and attention-grabbing posters. The majority of posters are nothing more than text thrown onto a blank canvas along with some clip art. Before you start calling me out as harsh and overly-critical, I am not blaming those who created the posters. They tried, and I loudly applaud that. Props to you for trying to make our school a better place. But the thing is, nobody has taught you how to do a poster properly. Hell, I look at what some of the graphics class has made and you'd think that after a semester of being on a computer, you would have a comprehension of font and colour choice, but it seems not.

I am not asking for a whole lot. Now, I am no design prodigy, but if you threw me and the poster creators from all the clubs into a room with a single computer, they would come out knowing at least the fundamentals of design. This brings me to my next topic...

Fundamentals
Clubs and councils do a terrible job of teaching publicity how to advertise themselves. Even Students' Council doesn't do much to guide and teach our publicity guy. But this is only one example of a fundamental flaw. Another is prevalent in the social media. The account holder is either a) a staff member, or b) a student. With case a), the content of the account is always too strict and dull, or a cringey attempt at being hip and relatable. In case b), the student is given complete control and represents the school. As you can see, multiple problems spawn from this, especially if the student is not completely trustworthy. How do we solve this?

Communication
There is a clear absence of communication and coordination among all the respective clubs and councils, but an even larger one between the students and administration. I am but only a grade 11 representative, and as a such, I am not classified as an executive member (it is kind of ironic considering I have been in council the longest). To my understanding however, there has not been a single executives meeting (a meeting consisting of exec. members from all clubs and councils). If I am correct in this, it makes me severely depressed and anxious about how we will run our events this year.

There are a lot of problems at Alpha, but I hope that I can get a head start on them this year by taking on more of a leadership role in Students' Council and establishing groundwork for future years to come. Hopefully in my senior year there will be enough done by me so that I can pass the torch down and leave it to the next year. What they decide to do with my work is up to them, but my end goal is to leave an imprint or mark by the time I leave.