This Jesuit school year has brought many changes to the community. Many of them have brought positive changes to the Jesuit community and campus. One of the more prominent changes for returning students is the end of the morning announcements. This year, Jesuit Dallas decided to stop making their morning announcements, instead opting to have an article written each week on the Rangernet page with the script for the morning announcements but with the actual announcement in it. Now, some of you could care less if Jesuit has morning announcements, and some of you need to learn about the announcements. But taking away the morning announcements is a negative change. It served a vital role in our Jesuit community.

The Why?

According to many faculty at Jesuit, the main reason for stopping the morning announcements is teachers complaining that it took too long and too much time from class time. Now, this reasoning does have some validation. The morning announcements could, sometimes, be very lengthy, with having to say a prayer (with a backstory usually behind it) or Ranger of the Week. The morning announcements could be lengthy.

Now, at most, I could remember that the morning announcements would take 3 minutes to complete. To test this theory, I decided to read one of the scripts for the morning announcements on October 10th (most recent), and an unprepared me took around 2 minutes and 5 seconds to complete. In another 30-45 seconds for realism, we get around 2:30 – 2:45 seconds of class time wasted.

Another point I will make about the time is that the morning announcements could have been shortened. For example, we can have the Ranger of Week description of the students could be trimmed or completely cut. The background they often do for the prayer could also be an aspect of the announcement that could be shortened without taking away from the content. The sports recap could have been trimmed as well, and many other things. The point is that the announcements were very flexible for changes.

Reason to Bring it Back

1. The current System needs to be fixed.

The current place where they will put the morning announcement, as I said earlier, is that it’s on the RangerNet page, but the question is where? Now, I thought it was in the News section, which is where it may have been, but as of writing the article, it is missing. I had to look it up to find it, and only then did I find the scripts for the morning announcement.  The scripts are better than I would have thought. They have most of everything that the previous morning announcements used to have and even have links to articles on recap about Jesuit sports. However, I will note that the last time one was written was on October 10th, and they need to go into detail about Ranger of the Week.

The real problem with this whole system is that it is inconvenient to find these morning announcements. It’s pretty hard to find them, and most students at Jesuit try to find them on Rangernet and read them. Why tell us to check RangerNet and have it inaccessible for us?

2. Strengthen the Community

The morning announcements were an essential way to strengthen the Jesuit community. When else would the average Jesuit student learn about how the debate team did in a tournament or how a water polo match went? It was a way to congratulate our fellow Jesuit brother’s accomplishments, which was the case for sports that weren’t just football or basketball. This is also the case with Ranger of Week, which highlights someone in our community who goes above and beyond on their time here at Jesuit, and we celebrate it in the announcement. In short, it was a way to get caught up in the community and highlight our student body, and taking that away just served to break that aspect of our community.

3. Get a Reminder on the Jesuit Community

My last point for bringing back the morning announcements is that they can help get reminders about school events. There have been many times when I have tried to find a link or reminder on some school event that is going on and can’t find it. The ranger reports are hard to find; most students will never read them. The only other way was through the morning announcements. It served as an essential way to convey information on school-wide events and give heads up on them. Whether tickets are on sale for an event, when a college visit is happening, or when other events are happening, the morning announcements always help notify the student body.

And this also is the same case with a lot of the clubs at Jesuit. If you remember, the announcements would list which clubs were having a meeting on that given day with the room number where they were meeting. This not only gave the club some exposure but also was a way for students to have the ability to find new clubs and know when they meet and where to go quickly. It was a way to help facilitate students to be more open to growth in the community. Without it, it makes it much harder for students to expose themselves to new things.

Conclusion

Jesuit lost something when they canceled the morning announcements. There is a lot of positivity that the announcement had on our community in the apst, and there are ways that we can adjust it to run more smoothly in our schedule. If you have a stance on whether we should add back morning announcements, below is a poll about whether or not we should bring back the announcements.

Link: https://take.quiz-maker.com/poll4978893xC0b040Ad-152

Stay tuned to the Roundup for more school news coverage.