Senior class officers take a festive spin on fundraising

Two staff members will be doing their part to support the senior class by donning festive pilgrim and turkey costumes on Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving break.

The question remains: who will be the faces behind the turkey and pilgrim? Senior class officers have been promoting their “Turkey up your Teacher” fundraiser by passing around festively decorated bins to collect money for teachers in the competition. The teachers with the bins who collect the most money win the competition, and ultimately, the pilgrim and turkey costumes for a day.

“[The students] have a lot of love and respect for our teachers, so we thought it would be fun to collaborate with them on a fundraiser,” class representative Karen Chen said.

Students have until Nov. 20 to cast their votes by donating loose change in bins labelled with the names of teachers.

This year, the senior class officers decided to pair up the teachers in order to get more teachers involved. Because many of the teachers are from the same departments or had similar groups of students, the officers consolidated the votes by grouping teachers into pairs.

Biology and AP Environmental Science teacher Kristen Thompson, for example, often stops by Biology and Earth Science teacher Lisa Cochrum’s room during class to deposit funny notes or to recount funny memories from their travels together to Cochrum’s students. Naturally, the two friends were paired together.

Drama teacher Sarah Thermond and choir teacher Andrew Ford; Mike Davey and Jerry Sheehy from the history department; journalism teacher Mike Tyler and English teacher Ken Nguyen; Suzanne Herzman and Natasha Ritchie from the English department; math teachers Jennifer Mantle and Audrey Warmuth; and science teachers Janny Cahatol and Cheryl Lenz were also grouped together.

The fundraiser idea was initially created by the class of 2015’s senior class officers, who wanted to put a festive spin on the traditional food fundraiser.

2015 senior class president Josh Pi called “Turkey up your Teacher” one of his classes’ most successful fundraisers, as it raised over $300 and was an “entertaining sideshow during a time when the oncoming finals workload increased.”  (Music teacher Mike Boitz wore the gobbler garb and Todd Dwyer and Matt Welander dressed up as pilgrims last year.)

The fundraiser’s proceeds will go directly to the class’s senior prom funds, ultimately lowering the price of bids when they go on sale in May. According to Chen, the senior class officers want to make prom as accessible as possible for a variety of students.

“The senior class officers have a wonderful prom planned out, and we have a goal of getting as many seniors as possible to go to prom because it's our last year,” Chen said. “We don't want any seniors missing out because of financial issues, so we have a wide variety of fundraisers planned out to bring down the ticket prices.”