Better Bright than Dull

First day back to school and surprise, MGCI is now the owner of a brand new Yellow Brick Road. One that swirls from the music hallway, to the culinary arts hallway, and finally to the art hallway.

Ms. Goldenberg likes to call it MGCI’s Yellow Brick Road as a reference to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Even though this was a small paint job, the “Yellow Brick Road” has become quite a conversation starter for staff and students. Everyone’s talking about it; wondering why it’s there, or worse: “what colour was the floor before?!” During registration week, students were even seen taking photos with friends on the new yellow floor.

Nowadays, interactive art projects that bring people together and give them something to talk about and connect over are becoming popular. By debating whether the new colour is good or bad, and suggesting different colours that could have been painted instead, the paint job is strengthening the relationship of MGCI staff and students with their school.

Many staff and students wish a less bright and less “eye-gnawing” colour was chosen, to which head caretaker Luke Chanmugam says that it is “better to be bright than dull”. The brightness was the huge difference people saw, making it easier for them to recognize the change.

Mr. Chanmugam, who made the decision to paint the floors this colour, said that the previous paint job was done about twenty years ago. This bright yellow was always the colour of our hallways; it had just faded over the years to the brown-yellow colour we were used to.

Mr. Chanmugam decided now was the time for this paint job because he wanted to promote a clean environment around MGCI. He said that people will always be cleaner in a clean area; they are more likely to pick up garbage in a clean environment to keep it clean, as opposed to an environment that wasn’t clean in the first place. “It’s all psychological,” Mr. Chanmugam said, “I wanted to give kids a sense of responsibility and I wanted to try to make them participate in keeping the school clean.”

“It gives a sense that we’re different”, said Visual Arts teacher Ms. Masemann. With only the art, music, and culinary arts hallway floors painted yellow, the paint job helps physically distinguish MGCI’s creative art departments from the rest of the school building. When we are all used to it, maybe we can start referring to these hallways as “the yellow hallway” or the “Yellow Brick Road”.