Creek is gradually transitioning into a new type of student identification: Minga. The app has a digital ID for every Bruin, along with an event calendar for registered activities. Minga was a non-mandatory addition to the physical ID system in the past school year, but Creek hopes to transition into the app being a full replacement.
For now, in what security guard Timothy Wright called the “honeymoon period” of Minga, security guards won’t perform very many ID checks.
“I think it’s just appropriate to let everybody get settled in before you start,” Wright said. “Being here for as long as I’ve been here, you recognize a bunch of kids, and you see the ones who look peculiar about being here.”
At the beginning of the year, the Minga IDs didn’t work in two places on campus: the library and the lunch line. Students like junior Eden Odendahl noticed this.
“It’s convenient…just to check out a book, but obviously I couldn’t do that,” Odendahl said.
Students and administrators were puzzled by Minga’s selective malfunctions, but, with a couple of software fixes, activities director Kelly Devitt found the solution. “The first time we uploaded kids, something happened with their ID numbers, where they got jumbled up,” Devitt said. “So now it can be used in the cafeteria and in the library.”
So, if those problems are fixed, do students even need to carry a physical ID anymore?
“Technically no,” Devitt said. “People can use it for anything. And that’s what’s really cool and what I’m excited about.”
They are only “technically” full replacements because neither the digital or physical IDs can yet also serve as RFID, or bus passes for students. According to Devitt, that can only happen when the entire district agrees to use Minga for all students.
“It will be another example of our phones driving another thing into obsolescence,” junior Andre Champeau said. “Just one less thing to carry.”
Alongside full ID integration, part of Minga’s appeal to Creek is the digital calendar that is viewable by all students. When students use their Minga app to get into school events, they are rewarded with points. These points, if students have enough, can earn certain incentives, like prom tickets, exclusive self-scheduling benefits, and possibly even a parking pass, free of charge.
“Perks that the Minga app will carry…will certainly help with student attendance at events,” Champeau said. Any student can go visit an activity where a school-appointed adult will be present to scan ids and grant points. A higher point value is assigned to Creek events that the school wants to attract more people too.
“We don’t really have to push kids to go to football games. It’s worth one point,” Devitt said. “But the fall choir concert is 10 points because we want more kids to go.”
Another feature that upstages Creek’s physical IDs is the removal of any kind of fraud. Students aren’t able to screenshot their friend’s IDs, or make fake ones in order to get certain privileges that they didn’t have before. Every ID has an animated background and a ticking clock. Freshman IDs are also a different color, which makes a duplication process difficult.
Not all students are entirely looking forward to full Minga integration. The app has a feature that integrates a hall pass system, where passes are given by teachers and overseen by administrators.
“Luckily Creek does not, or hasn’t activated this feature yet,” Champeau said. “But the hall passes can be very unpopular and in my opinion, invasive.”
No Creek announcements have ever hinted at the possibility of the hall pass system being put into place, though.
And while administrators like Devitt are excited about the prospect of inclusion that Minga might bring to Creek activities, security staff like Wright simply hope it will make the campus safer.
“With all the catastrophes and everything that are going on in the…United States, it’s just one more way that we can make sure that everybody’s safe on campus,” Wright said.
