THE CHINTHE ROAR MANIFESTO
The Chinthe Roar team is grateful for the massive growth and support that the ISY community has provided Roar. As we grow and expand our group, we want to keep all of you informed about our views and intentions and what we want to do in the future. Here are some handpicked problems that we can help solve by implementing the proposed solutions.
What is the problem?
- The distribution of resources amongst all clubs in ISY is substantially unequal, resulting in varying levels of successful marketing. Newer clubs struggle to promote their ideas due to inadequate resources, trapping them in the cycle of irrelevance, where relevance drops as the ISY community fails to understand the significance of the club. As the club’s messages are forgotten, student-club interaction drops and eventually reaches zero, causing the club to disappear from the ISY community. Firmly established clubs don’t face this issue, as they hold great prestige due to their mainstream appeal. Thus it is considerably difficult for new clubs to find their footing in the ISY community by themselves. Due to the difficulty posed on new clubs, most students don’t pursue their creative interests, resulting in fewer innovations in the ISY community. As “Global Learners”, how should we be able to provide ”Lifelong Service” to this ever-changing world without innovating?
- Due to the sheer size of the ISY community, many smaller clubs and individuals that significantly impact ISY and its surrounding communities are left unnoticed. Even though such activities are covered in the announcement videos produced by Roar, they still don’t get proper recognition as many teachers fail to showcase videos during the assigned times. The lack of wide-ranging and effective places to communicate with the student body only amplifies this issue.
- The increased size of our community has not only impacted our ability to communicate with one another but has also hindered the quality of our school culture. The failure to engage the student body in large scale, optional events is the root of the issue. This is evident in the low attendance of students in optional events, such as sports events hosted by the school, movie nights etc. The cause for this is the club’s inability to adapt to new surroundings coupled with the wants and needs of the student body. The absence of communication between clubs and students is ultimately what causes this problem.
- Leaders of many clubs are too comfortable in their positions as they have never been held accountable for failing to meet their promises. This has incentivized many candidates for leadership positions to make lofty promises to the student body to get elected. Some follow-through, however many fail to do so, resulting in glaring issues never being addressed. We need checks and balances to hold our leaders accountable for their promises and their actions at large.
What is our solution to the problem?
Being a small and relatively new club, we understand the difficulties that a similar club faces. Thus, this year, we will be focusing on solving and proposing potential solutions to our common problems and getting clubs to sign the Guidelines and Agreements for the Media League of ISY document that we had previously agreed upon. Moreover, we aim to assemble all clubs periodically throughout the month to discuss their current plans. They can request help in the form of financial aid, solutions to solve their problems, etc., from other clubs. We are still working on the idea and hope to deliver it before October.
Chinthe Roar is a multimedia club whose mission is to communicate, inform, and inspire our Chinthe community. To achieve this, we have to meet the community where they consume media. Thus our group will be looking to expand our media capabilities. We plan to create a podcast to explore complex issues that clubs like Girl Up are trying to solve. As documentaries take a significant investment of resources, and our announcements aren’t big enough to have a meaningful discussion of such issues, we believe that a podcast is a good compromise. We are aiming to have our first podcast after Quarter 1. We are also experimenting with video games by making them in engines like Godot or making custom maps in games such as Roblox, Minecraft, etc., to attract a younger audience.
The pressing issue of our school culture will be a massive undertaking, and we encourage other clubs to try their best to help in ways they are most comfortable. We plan to start with the sports culture, which is apparent from the lack of students attending sports games. We will experiment with commentators during games and have videos comparing one team to another right before a game. We are also planning on creating a legacy shoe any time an athlete wins an award related to school games. The legacy shoe will be made out of existing shoes like Nike Air Force 1 ’07, painted with art trying to summarise their journey. They’re only going to be two pairs of shoes, one for the athlete and one that will be put in a showcase. We also are planning on starting a merchandise line for the sports teams to pay for the legacy shoe and their showcases. We plan to make various changes, details about which will be public once we have reached an agreement with the concerned parties.
The last issue we are planning on tackling this year is holding our leaders accountable. This should not be taken as an attack/threat to any current leaders. However, the goal is to keep students informed about what promises have been made and fulfilled. Thus, we plan to make a video at the end of each month celebrating the leaders’ success and giving them an opportunity to reflect. We are also planning to make a video at the end of every year, looking at the overall picture of what our leaders have achieved.