Collaboration: what used to be an event welcomed with cheers and sighs of relief is now hardly tolerated with confusion and annoyance.

For the past several years, collaboration has been held during the first Wednesday of each month, resulting in a one hour delay for students.

Besides, students don’t really like the new changes. The hour that students used to spend sleeping in, finishing up homework assignments or going out for breakfast has now deteriorated to a measly half hour at the end of the day. Buses arrive earlier, at 1:30 p.m. (leaving at 1:40 p.m) and students can get home a bit earlier as well.

“Because I am a walker, the new collaboration schedule gives me some benefits. I can get home earlier than usual,” junior Tho Tran said. “However, sleep is more important, especially before class, than early dismissal.”

The majority of students looked to collaboration for the hour of extra sleep, a much-needed commodity for sleep-deprived students.

“I prefer last year’s collaboration schedule because it allowed students to get more sleep before they come to class,” Tran said. “Plus, students are more alert at 8:20 a.m. than they are at 7:20 a.m.”

It seems that students are receiving the short end of the proverbial stick when it comes to collaboration. It seems that we’re losing a valuable opportunity for sleep and a valuable tradition that everyone enjoys.

As you walk through the hallway to class, quickly picking up the pace to reach your next class on time, you hear the all-too-familiar strains of “I like to move it” echo throughout the hallway. There’s one minute left until you’re late to class and the cheesy lyrics let you know.

The idea was introduced by Principal Vincent Randazzo following research done in schools that used a warning song instead of a warning bell.

“It seemed to reduce the tardy rates in those schools,” Randazzo said. “We thought we’d give it a try, so we adopted it for this year.”

In which case, shortening the amount of time for the warning bell would make remedy the situation, changing it to a one minute warning bell instead of the traditional two minute warning bell.

According to a recent poll on thea-blast.org, 59 percent of students prefer the two minute warning bell. In the past, AHS used the two minute warning bell to let students when they had to be in class. The warning bell was a two tone bell with a milder sound than the standard late bell, which is a much better alternative than the one minute warning song.

The song becomes very repetitive throughout the day, let alone from week to week. Not to mention its lack of modernity. Luckily, Randazzo has plans for the song to be changed once every quarter by the senior class.

“I’m hoping that we’re able to use the senior class to choose the song for the second quarter. The senior class will pick it out, and it will be approved by the administrative team. The song will then be changed once a quarter.”

However, the current song choice by the administration isn’t completely school appropriate. With lyrics such as “I love how all the girls a move their body”, the song “I like to move it” has the ability to upset students.

“A lot of the schools we talked to used the song ‘Move it, Move it’ because you’ve got to move it, move it [to class],” Randazzo said.

It certainly wasn’t the intention of the administration to offend, as the song was thought of as a fun way to remind students to hustle to class.

“I feel that some people might find it offensive especially the line ‘all girls like to move their body’ because it could be potentially sexist and is of a sexual nature so it’s not very appropriate for school,” senior Nora Mohammed said.

Either way, the strains of “I like to move it” are often accompanied by exasperated sighs. Bottom line; we’d rather not listen to a song -much less songs we don’t like- while walking to class.

This change, in addition to the collaboration schedule change, is one that has been critically received by the student body as it interrupts the daily scheduling of students.