Virtual Lunches were first introduced the week of Feb. 1, which utilized new virtual meeting software, Rally, and attempted to connect students. The Associated Student Body and class councils organized the lunch meetings after Director of Student Activities Melissa Perino and Assistant Principal Nicole Elenz-Martin proposed the event idea.
Before running the meeting software in Virtual Lunches, Leadership and Renaissance students piloted the platform during class.
“In the previous times we’ve tested it, we didn’t really like it,” said junior Renaissance student Rowan Cary-Clark. “People already have a schedule for what they like to do during lunch. In this environment it’s so hard to try and be like ‘let’s make it how [in-person school] used to be.’ This is kind of the new normal.”
Virtual Lunches were the newest effort in leadership’s ongoing endeavor to foster connections among students as remote learning continues. The activity aimed to better the “new normal” by making room for student interaction, especially for newer students who have never had the chance to meet their classmates in person.
“It was really supposed to help us get to know new people because as freshmen, there are a lot of kids from different [middle] schools,” said freshman Renaissance student Morgan Marburger.
Despite attempting to unite new students, the freshman meeting had the lowest turnout. About 30 students went to the first senior Virtual Lunch, 15 went to the sophomore and junior lunch and 5 went to the freshman lunch. Because they had the time to get to know their classmates better, upper classmen may have been more enthusiastic were about seeing acquaintances than lower classmen about seeing students they didn’t know.
After discovering Rally, Elenz-Martin and Perino were inspired to launch Virtual Lunches sin
ce its meeting interface is geared towards hosting activities. Rally is structured as an elaboration on Zoom breakout rooms, imitating different areas in a venue, with unique features like room-specific music, center pictures and names. For Virtual Lunches, ASB and class councils collaborated to recreate Aragon campus’s main locations — Center Court, the theater, A Hall, B Hall, C Hall, D Hall and E Hall — as virtual Rally rooms.
“When we talked about it in Leadership and class council, [opinions on Rally were] somewhat divided,” said sophomore Class President Christien Wong. “Personally, I think it’s kind of weird because on0e of the features of Rally is you get to listen to other people talking as background chatter.”
However, the platform had additional safety problems. The lunch meetings were originally scheduled for the week of Jan. 18, but were postponed by two weeks because administrators wanted to ensure the event exclusively admitted Aragon community members. These precautionary measures were necessary to prevent susceptibility to Zoombombings — incidents where virtual meetings are infiltrated by unsolicited attendees. The Virtual Lunches, held during Rally’s free trial period, tested its security and collected students’ opinions to help gauge whether the program should be purchased.
“If we move forward with purchasing this platform, we will consider hosting groups during Enrichment Time, which gives students a longer window to access and reach out to friends, so it doesn’t feel as frenzied during the 30-minute lunch period,” Perino said.
Leadership has also been brainstorming how the software could host fairs, events and clubs although students’ unwillingness or inability to attend optional online events may prevent Rally’s future use at Aragon.
“I don’t like the idea of it in the long run because it’s just another screen or something else that we have to do,” Cary-Clark said.
There’s a constant contradiction as students advocate for interaction, but do not always participate in it.
“It’s a situation Leadership has been thinking about for a long time because you don’t want to force people to connect with each other,” Wong said. “I think interacting with other students besides people in your class would help [with connectedness], but school shouldn’t mandate it outside of school hours because that defeats the purpose.”
In February, Virtual Lunches will continue to provide a place where many can chat and play games with peers outside of the classroom. In the first week, some that joined the meets enjoyed it, but most didn’t deem it a necessary lunchtime staple. Perino and Elenz-Martin are currently deciding if and how Aragon will purchase Rally for future use.
