Anonymous Opinion Column: October: Schoolwide Announcements

Each issue, the Broadside staff will come up with a topic or question that may be of interest to members of the HHS community and conduct an anonymous online survey to receive and publish opinions on the topic. This month we sent out to you, HHS, the following question: “Hanover High School has several different ways of communicating with students. The main two are e-mail and the intercom. These communication methods have upsides and downsides. What do you think?”

We received a wide variety of opinions regarding school to student communication. All of the respondents seemed to prefer schoolwide email over the intercom. Students left comments like “Email is great, intercom is just a distraction.” and “email for sureeeeee.” Another student went more in depth on the subject, saying “The email system is great! Many high schools still don’t have this service available to students but I enjoy being able to reach out to my teachers over email. It’s also a really great tool when you have group projects.”

While overall there was a positive opinion of the email system, there were varying opinions of the intercom. Many of these opinions were negative. One student eloquently stated, “I cant hear the intercom in the school. so scratch that! LETS RUMMBLEEEEE” and another said, “Students and teachers talk over the intercom (in the background) so that it becomes hard to hear and ineffective.”

There were also more descriptive responses in favor of the intercom, such as “ I wish HHS would use the intercom more often. I find no use of it besides announcements in the morning and end of day announcements sometimes. I really wish we had a bell system because teachers don’t follow the schedule time.” Interestingly, Council will soon discuss a motion coming from a Civitas class that seeks to integrate a bell or other notification system into the daily HHS routine.

There were also students that favored the concept of the intercom, but didn’t feel it was being used properly. One student wrote “It [The Intercom] is way too quiet. Every morning, people talk during the announcements and, more disappointingly, the Pledge, simply because they either don’t hear it or it is not assertive enough for them to bother to stop speaking. In my opinion, this is very disrespectful and does not promote a wholesome community. In short, TURN UP THE VOLUME so that we don’t miss important announcements and people can quit talking over the Pledge like they don’t care and can “pause respectfully” for the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance by those who wish to do so.”

Another student wrote, “I think that the intercom is nice but I think they need to improve the sound quality. When not in a perfectly silent room I hear about 20% of what’s said. Either the people saying the announcements need to sound off or they need to change the system so it can actually be heard. Secondly the email system is pretty efficient. I think that most students don’t read announcement emails because the walls of text are so daunting and the student’s motivation to read them is so very small. While this is mostly the student’s own fault it is a factor and it should be brought up. That’s all I have to say.”

One student wrote “I think no matter how they decide to do it, the administration should be communicating with the students more.” In conclusion, the general consensus of the student body was that the intercom needs to be louder and that email is a good system.