After the conclusion of semester one, a platform that goes by the name of Minga was introduced to Danbury High School students. According to the app’s description, Minga is a  “Student Engagement Platform that integrates many student and school tools and resources into one place such as Student ID Cards, Hall Passes, School Communication, Tickets and Event Management and more.” Minga was put in place to make both students’ and teachers’ lives simpler. It allows students to have constant access to their IDs which can be used for major school events. Although Minga was meant to help students and teachers, it is currently facing both technical difficulties and backlash from DHS users. While the school is remaining to attempt to integrate Minga into the school environment, both students and teachers reject the idea.

Minga was implemented in an effort to make changes to many existing problems, with one of the main issues attempting to be resolved through the use of the platform being students who consistently roam the hallways during the school day. Passes used with Minga will have a timer set on them that will notify the teacher if set off. This makes it a lot easier for teachers to notice when a student has been out for too long and assign detention. While for students this function on Minga might seem like a horrible thing, for teachers it isn’t. With digital passes, the spread of germs is minimized when everyone has digital hall passes instead of everyone using the same hall pass that gets dropped on the bathroom floor. Not only does Minga utilize the hall pass feature, but the student ID feature is great as well. It makes situations such as signing into the library, getting through the lunch line, and showing your tickets to get into sporting events a lot easier.

One of the most prevalent cons of Minga is that it does not allow students to sign into the app, hindering its effectiveness. Not only students, but teachers as well are finding it difficult to sign in. As stated by DHS junior,  Lucas Moura, “Minga is a very useless and terrible app that should have never been introduced because it does nothing to help students…”. Lucas explains that the main problem Minga was supposed to solve was the common use of extravagant bathroom passes which instead could have been resolved by simply switching back to paper passes. Adding on to that statement, Sophomore Jenna Saltzman believes that “Minga is a complete waste of money.” Saltzman explains that “it bothers [her] how the school is throwing away money into useless programs like Minga instead of putting it into resources we lack like air conditioning.”  Saltzman emphasizes the strong need for improvements in DHS and the lack of funding prevents the ability to fix them. “Instead of saving the little funds we receive, for whatever reason there was an apparent need to pay for an app to send kids to the bathroom through the use of their phones.” Sophomore Arion Archibald claims that while she believes  “Minga prevents germs, it is a challenge to the student/ teacher community because many teachers have to stop in the middle of lessons to approve students, and creating the pass takes a long amount of time.” Along with that, Archibald adds on the complications Minga inflicts “when it comes to cases of emergencies like you feel like you’re gonna pass out you have to wait for the teacher…” The need for a teacher to approve the passes is faulty, prior if the students needed to go to the bathroom or nurse they would have had just to inform the teacher quickly and grab a pass and go now they have to wait for the teacher to stop the lesson, login and approve their pass. While some may say Minga is a great addition to the school, as of right now, the majority of students believe the hall pass system before Minga functioned well and should not have been influenced so greatly by the minority of the school population who chose to skip class for 30 minutes. 

On a more positive note, a lot of exciting features are coming to Minga in the upcoming year. One of the first plans of action that are coming later this week is Minga’s features for substitute teachers. Many substitutes have yet to be able to use Minga. One of the main reasons why we’re switching to Minga in the first place is the feature to always have your student ID present in case someone asks. Not only will it eliminate the hassle of having to carry around a physical card, but it will also make things easier around the school. For example, the library has already taken initiative to utilize Minga for students to sign in. There are plans in place to utilize this feature all around the school. Checking out at lunch will be a lot quicker when just being able to scan your pass and walk through. The school also has plans to make it easier for students to use their IDs to get into sports events. Minga has a promising future for good change but people continue to slander it.