Another One Bites the Dust

In what some might term a failure, the first edition of our School's Year Disk will consist of a single copy of the Disc which will remain permanently in the Library. This is somewhat removed from the Year Disc's original goal of producing several hundred copies, which would be sold for twenty dollars each. It also appears that the yeardisc will fall short in terms of the its content, which at the moment consist entirely of one hundred megabytes of candid photos scanned from this year's yearbook.

Some of a more cynical persuasion might suggest that if this CD is produced, it will be without a doubt the costliest one in our school's possession. This is of course referring to the thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment purchased to facilitate the Year Disc's production. In the Year Disc's defense, much of the equipment has found other uses within our school. Production costs for the yearbook have lowered somewhat, and many students in the tech wing make good use of the colour scanners. There is also the possibility that a proper yeardisc might be produced at some point in the future.

If a yeardisc is ever to be produced, we must learn from this year's failure. "Student apathy" is to blame according to former project leader, who now occupies his time hacking into the school's new computer network. Student apathy seems to be a popular thing to blame for anything that goes wrong in our school. While pitiful attendance at recent yeardisc meetings demonstrates student apathy in action, in my experience students do not just walk away from a project for no reason. As with many failed student organizations, leadership with the yeardisc was somewhat lacking. While a great deal of effort was put into planning, very little direction was offered to the students who had volunteered to gather the content. Students where left almost entirely to their own devices to assemble the massive project, a strategy which yielded almost nothing.

At the beginning of this semester, the yeardisc seemed to be dead when its much publicized attempt to solicit student content failed spectacularly. However, the yeardisc seems to have risen from the dead. This is largely because of two interested students who have volunteered the use of their CD-burner, thus alleviating the cost of producing a CD professionally. Sadly, this seems to be too little too late to save the yeardisc. No one wants to waste their time on something which is sure to be a failure, and that is what the yeardisc is; a sure-fire failure. Perhaps this recent surge of interest will carry into next year, and we might actually have a yeardisc, but not without a lot of changes.