Each year, more and more people turn to podcasts to consume a wide range of information, from basic news updates to peculiar interests. Fourteen Whitman students have collaborated to bring the Whitman community its first ever home-grown podcast, experimenting with this increasingly relevant mass media tool.

Students from English teacher Omari James’s AP Lang class are making a podcast about social issues they feel don’t get enough coverage. Their first podcast, which is about 20 minutes long, will come out within the next couple of weeks and consist of the students reflecting on what it means to be a millennial.

The idea stemmed from one of James’s “taste-of-the-world-at-large” lessons in class.

“He’ll scratch the lesson plan for the entire day and he’ll take the opportunity to talk about a current event or something that has happened in history,” junior Caroline Rhodes said. “He’ll take the day to tell us about it because he thinks it’s important and that it can’t be ignored. It usually leads into a more thought-provoking discussion where it relates to something going on in our life or relates to a theme that we’re covering in class.”

So far, James has had two taste-of-the-world-at-large classes. Following the second of these, students had the idea to take these lessons and turn them into podcasts. James considered the idea and asked students who were interested to stay after class.

Fourteen students stayed seated at their desks in hopes of becoming involved in Whitman’s first podcast, and just a few days later the project was underway. Students recorded the podcast in the comfort of the school conference room.

Each member was assigned a different role to make the process more efficient. Positions include two media directors, a legal team, a red team, researchers and marketing.

The media directors head the podcast and oversee the rest of the positions. The legal team deals with the legal documents and parent permission forms. The red team looks for loopholes within the data and finds any information that may be useful. The researchers collect all of the data, and marketing is in charge of setting up social media accounts and spreading the word about the podcast.

The students wanted their first podcast to hit close to home and be relevant to Whitman students, junior Martin Torrey said.

“We’ll be taking a look at what defines who millennials are compared to other generations of people,” Torrey said.

Rhodes hopes that students will get a better understanding of who millennials are.

“We defined what it was and are basically trying to start the conversation of who are millenials,” Rhodes said. “What did they do? What does this mean for the next generation? How they have struggled to find their place in the world?”

The podcast, however, was not an easy task. It took much more time and preparation than they initially thought—planning to meet once a month turned into once every week.

“None of us have any experience with this,” Rhodes said. “It’s become this huge project that none of us expected.”

But the amount of work hasn’t stopped them. In fact, they’ve set goals for future podcasts and the team hopes to release three more podcasts by the end of the school year.

Check back at the Black & White Online for the first podcast.