By Melissa Fan, Staff Reporter
During the COVID 19 pandemic, smaller traditions are still continuing and can give students the small bit of normalcy they are looking for. Music Fridays were something that many looked forward to during the school day, something to brighten up their day after a particularly stressful lesson or a challenging test. Music Fridays were a fun tradition where each Friday, music would be played in the hallways while students walked to their next classes.
“And it was always nice walking between classes. Like if you just had a test or you’re going to a class that you really hate, hearing a song that you really like is always fun,” student council president Lena Pothier said.
Because of the new virtual learning environment, students will now be clicking from meeting to meeting on the screen of their computer at home instead of actually walking from door to door of their classrooms. Music Fridays seemed like something that would cease to continue, but members of the Conestoga Student Council decided to continue it.
“We know that (Music Fridays are) a great way to enhance the learning environment and make it a better place to learn and work, and it reduces stress,” student council member Nicholas Arbes said.
Usually on these days, members of the student council would play a song over the school’s loudspeaker as the students walked through the hallways in between classes.
Songs played used to be selected by different athletic teams or clubs that decided to sponsor that week’s Music Friday.
“Nick runs this usually in school. So he would get an email from the team or club that (was) like, hey, we’d like to sponsor this music Friday would send him a list, we would approve it and he would go to the main office and just play it (the song) through the loudspeaker,” Pothier said.
“We can’t play the full song, but throughout the day, we just posted little snippets of the songs,” Arbes said, about the different way of playing the music virtually.
Because of the changes to the school day this year, the student council is thinking about new ideas to make the tradition more interactive.
“We’re trying to find new ways to make Music Friday I guess a little bit more fun rather than just getting a 15 second clip of a song,” Pothier said. “We haven’t quite figured it out all yet, I think that we have a few ideas coming up, but it’s gonna take a little bit just to have it kind of be in sync and work out, but we think that this is a good start.”
Of course, there are some disadvantages with continuing the activity online, compared to in person. “It’s definitely less interactive. I mean, I don’t know if all the students are paying attention,” Arbes said.
There are quite a few disadvantages now that school is done all behind an electronic screen. There’s no saying who’s really listening to the music that’s been playing, as well as who is actually able to access the Instagram account, @virtualstoga.
“Obviously in school, everyone hears the music, everyone’s involved. But since only a few people, or a small percentage of the grade and the school follow the Instagram page, we only have, you know, a few kids that are actually kind of exposed to it,” Arbes said.
Despite the downsides, the Conestoga student council has ultimately decided to keep running the event.
“We think that by bringing something that we would all look forward to on Fridays at schools, and try to restore even like this slightest bit of normalcy, we thought that could make people feel a little bit better,” Pothier said.
