Google chat, otherwise known as G-Chat, was a built-in messaging device that all North students had access to during the 2023-24 school year. However, this year North has made the decision to remove students’ and staffs’ access to the platform. This change creates chaos for many students who are a part of clubs, sports and activities here at school.
G-Chat was used for effective communication that allowed advisers, students, teachers and anyone else at North to communicate. One of the characteristics of G-Chat that makes it different compared to sending emails is the casual tone. Many students find writing an email a very professional task, whereas G-Chat allowed students to send a quick message detailing confusion and receive a coherent answer within minutes. Many clubs used it as their main form of communication, especially when there were urgent matters or last second issues that needed to be resolved. The lack of G-Chat raises a question for multiple activities: how are they supposed to communicate now?
In a high school club, it is extremely important for us to have access to immediate communication with all club members and advisers. However, this possibility has been taken from us. Before, students and advisers were easily able to make all the necessary group chats as well as have one-on-one conversations. The application often comes in handy when there is an urgent important matter to deal with. It is also an extremely important tool when people take field trips or go down to state and need to reconvene.
It is much more difficult to get a hold of each other now. As new people start to show up to clubs, communicating with them is crucial. Due to many technical issues with group chats and ever-changing rosters of club members, there is no way for people to easily contact everyone for things such as reminders. Along with this, not every student necessarily has a phone. Some students also have issues getting email notifications on their phone.
Now, there is a huge disconnect between us students and advisers. We have no way to easily chat with our advisers outside of email, which is slow and inefficient for the purpose of having a conversation. It’s also extremely easy for emails to get missed and buried in the inbox of an adviser or student. It’s much more of an inconvenience for advisers to contact us, as they need to add all members into the email before it’s sent rather than just select the G-Chat as they had done previously. There is no easy shortcut to this either without a third party app, as it is against conduct and inappropriate for advisors to have student phone numbers. Overall, it has become much more difficult to communicate with advisers.
G-Chat was a tool that many students and advisers relied on, and without this tool it forces activities to find third party communication apps. One reason it seems G-Chat was removed was due to the inappropriate use of the device. However, this motion seems almost contradictory. When G-Chat was used in a wrong manner, tools like Gaggle were able to be used in order to stop things such as harassment or bullying from happening. On third-party apps such as Remind or GroupMe, there is no school monitoring, which makes it almost more difficult to control the issues that appear on chat logs.
Sometimes, inappropriate use doesn’t look like bullying or harrassment, but rather inappropriate times of use. An example would be using G-Chat to send messages to a friend during math class instead of doing the online homework. However, this is not a G-Chat exclusive issue. Despite the usefulness of the Chromebooks, they are devices that open students up to a lot of opportunities. There will always be students who access different programs than the ones they should be on, despite instruction. G-Chat did have some issues, but they were not detrimental enough to remove the chat entirely.
Aside from the many logistical issues, the removal of this system goes directly against North’s mission and values. A huge emphasis North and D303 continuously make on behalf of the student body is the importance of “belonging.” Belonging is often pursued in the form of joining a club or a sport, something that over 1,400 students are a part of. All of those students need access to a form of communication, whether that is with their coach, advisor, other clubmates, or teammates. Without access to a built-in school communication platform, such as G-Chat, these students can find it difficult to keep up with their activity, making it less enjoyable and resulting in a lack of feeling of belonging. Although students can communicate with each other through texting or social media, not all students have access to the same apps, resulting in a disconnect between students. G-Chat was a device that created a feeling of community, which is no longer available in the same capacity.
Unfortunately, it seems G-Chat is not an application we will be getting back, and everyone now must adapt and learn to move forward, even though things might be a little more clunky and complicated now. We may never share a laugh at a funny auto-generated conversation summary or get to have some extra fun with the emoji reactions again, but we will move forward. However, we still think it’s safe to say: Bring back G-Chat!
