Rockhurst students have a new reason to pay attention in class on most Friday mornings: the SGA news updates. Newly introduced this year, the Student Government Association’s videos are an attempt to highlight weekly school events and engage with the student population in a way not consistently done before.
The SGA-led project, launched this fall under the direction of the student body president, Brendan Ortbals, aims to inform, entertain, and energize the student body.
“I’ve noticed that people don’t really pay attention to the [over-the-intercom] announcements,” Ortbals said. “This is something that we’ve been wanting to introduce for a while. We had a vision and we stuck to it.”
The videos routinely feature seniors Michael LaSala and Jack McShane, who bring humor and personality to each production. Ortbals said he originally envisioned rotating through different members of SGA as anchors, but the chemistry between LaSala and McShane quickly nixed that idea.
“It’s familiarity… the dynamic works so well, and you don’t really want to screw that up,” he said. “The first time it took us two hours to film, but now we finish in twenty minutes.”
The videos are being received by students just as SGA hoped they would be, with the McShane-LaSala dynamic leading the charge.
“It’s new, and it’s fun,” junior Max Buerge said. “I know a lot of other schools have something like this, so I’m glad we do too.”
“I mean, McShane is McShane,” junior Jackson Kelly said. “You know he’s going to be funny, but you also know Ortbals is going to make sure everything works perfectly.”
The idea for the project began months earlier, when Ortbals said he pitched the concept while running for SGA president. Over the summer, Ortbals spent time at Missouri Boys State, where he served as a director and scriptwriter for productions there. That gave him the experience to bring the idea to life.
“I’d write scripts in ten minutes, and get the actors and tell them how to do it,” Ortbals said. “It was much more magnified than what we have here at Rockhurst, but it taught me how to do it.”
Faculty support helped get the idea off the ground. Lari Bunch, the senior class moderator, provided early guidance and approval, as well as allowing access to the green screen room where the recording takes place, and ensuring videos aligned with school policies.
“It’s student run,” Ortbals said, “but Mrs. Bunch has been great with giving us guidance.”
Figuring out what and what not to include was a key challenge for the fledgling news team. Content that made the cut included SGA updates, sports coverage, and anything time-relevant happening within the school.
“I put at the end of every video, ‘If you have news, please send it in,'” Ortbals said, “but if things are three weeks down the road, we’re not going to put it in. It’s all about how close it is to the day [that we make the video]. Is it relevant? But most stuff we include. We don’t cut stuff.”
While appearing on a regular basis, these videos are not weekly. Ortbals says the timing of the videos correlate with SGA events and school activities, and are not done on weeks that aren’t deemed to be heavy on student-involved activities.
Nonetheless, when they do air, students say they do get something out of them.
“I definitely feel more engaged by [the videos],” sophomore Jack Morrison said. “They’re much more fun than regular announcements.”
“It draws attention much better than listening to [the intercom announcements],” junior Ben Olschki said. “I remember things [from the videos] more than I do from announcements.”
“I know the themes for games now,” junior Brendan Keegan said, “and that makes me way more likely to go to them.”
Though the videos have been well-received by students, Ortbals said the creation of them hasn’t been without difficulties. Technical issues with the green screen, editing setbacks and scheduling conflicts have tested the small SGA team.
“The first video looked really bad,” Ortbals said with a laugh. “We tried like three different [camera] angles, close-ups and that just looked really bad. So it’s all about, ‘Okay, this didn’t work. How can we make it better?'”
Looking ahead, Ortbals is thinking even bigger.
“I know this is a long shot, but I want this to be a class. I want it to have that same energy, but I wanted to be more furnished and more exciting.”
For now, though, the SGA videos are doing exactly what they set out to do—making Friday mornings more lively, engaging and informational.
