“Bring in cans because it’s for a good cause!”

Delaney Jess, Student Council Canned Food Drive Chair

By Margaux Rentzel

Multimedia editor

Student council is gearing up for their annual canned food drive November 18-22. It will be another competition between the classes, and the winning class will win $250 and 50 class cup points.

Collected items will go to the Grace Lutheran Food Bank in Red Lion. 

“It is directly affecting our community,” head of the drive committee for student council, Delaney Jess said, “and we try to help them out as much as we can.”

Students in grades 9-12 can bring in canned food items to be a part of the competition as well as give to their community. 

“I hope it has as much momentum behind it as it did last year,” Jess said, “because we collected around 10,000 things to donate.” 

In April of 2019, the student-council-run canned food drive implemented an incentive to get people to participate. “[In previous years] when we didn’t have the competition,” Jess said, “we only had probably a couple of hundred cans.”  

In the Spring 2019 drive, the classes competed against each other for the class that brought in the most cans. The winner would receive $500 toward their graduating class’s executive council. 

According to Student Council, last year the juniors were in the lead during the whole week. Until, on Friday, the seniors and sophomores arose in the competition. The classes started bringing ramen because each ramen packet counted as one “can”. 

The seniors saw their placement on Friday morning and used their class money to leave during the school day and go buy more items for the drive before everything was counted, according to a representative from student council

The controversy caused the seniors to become disqualified and the sophomores ended up winning. Jess was disappointed in the outcome. 

“The idea that it’s going to families in our community was lost in the sense of competition.”

“Now that we know the way that it went and we have the experience,” Jess said. “We just implemented some new rules so that way it’s more fair and a friendlier competition.” 

This November the new rules are gravy packets do not count; ramen packets count as one quarter of a can; and leaving school to go buy cans is prohibited. 

“Bring in cans because it’s going to a good cause.”  Jess said. “May the best class win!”