By Daphne Riddle   

Junior Editor-in-Chief

A Clothing Drive has just taken place at Red Lion, the first one to take place at the high school, during the weeks of Jan. 27-31 and Feb. 3-7. Student council collected piles of clothing to donate to Community Reach in their two-week drive. 

Delaney Jess, the committee head of the Drive committee, showed her enthusiasm in this new idea to help the community. “I decided to start a clothing drive because it had never been done before which I thought was very surprising,” Jess said. 

This drive was also used as a competition between the classes, the prize at the end being class cup points towards larger prizes later in the year. This created a race for the grades against one another, and the numbers of clothes collected grew each day. 

Two weeks of donations went by quickly, and the classes were fighting for the top spot. The walls were covered by posters hung by multiple classes, encouraging students to donate. There was also an abundance of social media posts made for the same purpose. This healthy competition spurred on the students to collect as many clothes as possible, with the thought of helping the community also a motivating force. 

At the end of the time period, all the articles of clothing were counted by Student Council members, and the final tallies were announced on the council’s Instagram. The stacks of clothes piled high, as tall as the tables they were being collected by. Hundreds of pieces were folded and getting ready to be packaged while the students were anxiously waiting for the results. 

Taking first place were the sophomores, who brought in 347 pieces of clothing. The remaining classes ranked as follows; seniors with 197, freshman with 82, and juniors with 28. The sophomore’s reward will be a day of getting out of class early to be the first people in line for lunch. 

This first year initiative went over very well, and everyone around the school seemed to enjoy the competition aspect. Hundreds of articles of clothing are now waiting to be donated to Community Reach to go to people in need. “I think for our first year it was a huge success,” said Jess, “Every little bit counts and we collected over 600 articles of clothing!”

The hope of the Drive committee is to continue this event next year, and the students’ passion of bringing in clothes this year makes it a likely chance of another clothing drive in the future. 

Student Council’s work to donate towards locals in need were evident the past few weeks when collecting clothing, and Community Reach will soon be receiving hundreds of clothes to assist these people. “It is just another way we can help our community,” said Jess, “so why not!”