Val Chen

“I want each rally to be different.”

For those in a hurry,

• Val has been in Goof Troop for the past two years and ASG for the past year, so he’s been in every single rally since sophomore year.
• To ensure that rallies won’t be as chaotic as the Hello rally was this school year, Val would make sure that everything is planned out ahead of time during the summer.
• Val believes the best way to increase school spirit is to reach out to the student body on both rally commissioner and personal levels, and he would get his Goof Troop to help him reach out.
• Val would handpick acts for rallies in order to diversify the acts and avoid repetition between each rally.
• Val wants to break the unspoken pattern of rallies and add more humorous things like skits.

Will: Why are you the best candidate for RC?

Val: Out of the other three candidates, I believe I have the most experience in rallies in general. For one, I’ve been in every single rally since the beginning of my sophomore year, as I joined Goof Troop, and I was also part of ASG last year. Because of these experiences, I learned to understand how rallies work, not just from the outside, but from the inside, the logistics of it and how everything is put together.

W: What do you think about current rallies?

V: I wasn’t a big fan of the Hello rally, just because there were just too many games and not enough acts, but I also came to understand that it wasn’t really the rally people’s fault, but rather that it was because of summertime: everything was so cramped, and no one really had anything planned out for a rally, as there were only three days after school started. I think because of this, I would try to reach out to dance groups ahead of time and try to get their choreos and things before, to make sure that the Hello rally will never be just a rally of games.

W: So what would you fix about not just the first rally but also rallies in general, as they are right now?

V: There was a problem in the [Hello] rally because we had a game planned out for the rally, but because we didn’t run it through beforehand to make sure everything was okay, we ended up having a huge mess in the gym. It was a relay race, and you were supposed to go in one direction and it was a team, and people didn’t realize where the start or finish was, so they just kept going and going. So I would try to change it by making sure that rallies will always be planned out beforehand and not have any flaws like that.

W: So how would you increase school spirit?

V: I think the best way to really increase school spirit would be just to get to know the student body on a personal level. If people post flyers, like “Oh, dress up,” that’s good because you attract people to dress up. But they won’t really want to dress up unless you reach out to them and be like, “Hey, dress up for spirit. Show your school spirit.” What I want to do is try to reach out to the student body not only on the level of a rally commissioner but also on a personal level, just to get to know everyone.

W: Can you name an example of a specific way you would try to do this?

V: I would implement Goof Troop to help me do this. Goof Troop’s my team of rally helpers, so I would get Goof Troop to help and reach out to them, just like how I’m doing for now with the rally campaign. I’m trying to spread my flyers and stuff by texting people and telling them that, “Hey, I’m doing this, feel free to support me if you can,” and things like that, just like on a personal level, one-on-one.

W: How would you distribute the acts, or how would you distribute the events? 

V: I would try to make a rally skeleton. I would plan out what I want ahead of time in an Excel spreadsheet, and I would make a timeline and plan out minute by minute the acts in my rally. That way, I have my schedule done and dusted before I even start reaching out to groups.

W: How would you promote diversity in the rally acts?

V: Yohaan, the current RC, reached out to a talented pair of break dancers at Irvington instead of the typical hip hop in our rallies. That showed me that we need to handpick the acts in the rallies, to handpick what we want to see in the rally. We always see ICED in the rallies, so if we handpick, we would be able to diversify. I don’t really want to see ICED in every rally, it just gets repetitive.

W: Are there any other unique ideas you would like to share?

V: I just don’t want rallies to be repetitive. I want each [rally] to be different. For the 1.5 years I’ve been in them, I realized rallies follow this unsaid schedule: there’s always this many games, this many acts, there’s always someone dancing. I want to add more skits, more humorous things because those things are memorable.

W: Thank you for your time. Good luck on Friday!