Monday, December 21, 2009

Hooray!

Meridians, WE GOT OUR SIDE GATE BACK!!! WHOO!! =D
For those of you who do not have/read Facebook:

CONCLUSION OF THE TURNSTILE ISSUE.
Hi guys. This isnt really an event okay, i just had to find a way to send everyone a message.

ANYWAY. I went to see Ms Lai today and okay this is what you all have been waiting for: THEY ARE REMOVING THE TURNSTILE.

Heh. Okay before i tell you what else she said, i promised Ms Lai that i’d explain the reasons for the turnstile installation first. Its Not to catch latecomers, because actually, our college doesn’t really have much of a latecomer problem. Its actually for security reasons, because people keep getting stuff stolen. And also, random strangers keep coming in to use our toilets and sit in the canteen and that understandably poses a problem because what if they are old men and go in the girls toilets or something right. This is actually because alot of students have the habit of leaving the gate open when they leave school, and anyone can come in through the unsupervised gate as a result. Which all adds up to quite a big problem because strangers coming in poses as a threat to the students and teachers (Plus the theft cases) and the school came up with a way to increase security and minimise non-meridians from coming in- The Turnstile.

Unfortunately, all the unforeseen problems you guys have been experiencing started popping up. When we officially brought the problem to their attention sometime in early December (finalised petition was sent in on 2nd December which we have to thank Danial for cause he did it up really well, you can download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?lzzykojvzjm ) they actually had a meeting amongst themselves and tried to come up with a suitable solution while putting in temporary measures to make it easier for us to get out- if you’ve been wondering why you no longer need to press the button to leave college, now you know.

So they actually came up with a solution which i actually think is far better than the ones we came up with. What they're going to do is to MOVE the turnstile to the main gate. You know, the side-main gate that is always locked down and leads from the canteen? It was locked down due to the H1N1 situation actually, so that there aren’t so many entrances to school and it isn’t so difficult to monitor the people coming in to make sure we’re not infected. They're moving the whole turnstile thing there, so we can go out when it rains and when we feel like taking bus 3 for some odd reason or the other.

As for the side gate, this is the good news: they're going to give us back the old side gate. The one which kind of looks like a huge swinging door. They're going to station a security guard there in the afternoons to make sure random strangers dont come in and stuff and that we don’t leave the gate open when we leave for the aforementioned reasons. And if we go out for Friday lunch after school/before CCA and want to get back, the security guard will open the gate for us.

Not only that- they’ve actually taken into consideration the complaints posted on the facebook wall about students getting wet when it rains, and are going to install a screen at the side and try to fix the water-dripping-onto-our-heads problem.

So thats about it. I honestly think its incredible that they’ve done so much serious consideration and brainstorming regarding this issue so that it’ll benefit us the most, so Please don’t go around saying “Yay we won the war” or something like that because there is no war, we are not a military regiment, and this outcome would really have been impossible without the open-mindedness of Ms Lai and the school board. After listening to her rationale for the gate followed by the solution they’ve come up with today, i really do think that they’ve put in alot to make sure the student welfare is maximised and she was really incredibly nice and reasonable about the whole thing so i don’t really think she’s like Hitler much, no.

Really got to apologise to everyone about the name of the group though, The New MJC Sidegate is Retarded TTM isn’t really a very appropriate heading to a petition, but being as tech-stupid as i am, i really cant figure out how to change it. Its a good thing they didn’t take offense.

Also, a big thankyou to Danial for editing the petition, Jon for his slightly deranged but mad funny video, and most of the Callisto House Com for helping me come up with points and what to say to Ms Lai when i saw her.


So thats it, you should be able to see our new (or old, depending on how you look at it) sidegate up by the new school year, hopefully. You can once again go to Macs for lunch or something and still be back on time for CCA.



Enjoy your Friday lunches, everybody.

That's a million thanks to jemimah there. But to be honest, i think the turnstile has actually started to grow on me already. o.0

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