Student Council, in collaboration with Just Food, hosted a food drive just before March Madness. To add a fun twist, STUCO members decided to combine the participation of March Madness with the food drive.

“Everyone’s watching March Madness. We wanted to have a school competition, and doing that we wanted to help Just Food and help donate what we could and that’s why we kind of mixed those two. The entries are easy, you win a good prize, and you’re doing good for the community,” STUCO junior representative Daijah Preston said.

In addition to combining March Madness and a food drive, they also included discussions for incentives and advertisements, and according to executive board member Shelby Roberts, they had a long discussion for prizes.

“We had talked to Ms.McAnarney about what we were trying to do and she offered to help us pay for a TV as a prize, which is a great prize — it draws so many people in. Once we had secured that, I thought we would start posting about it two-to-three weeks beforehand. We had created posters and hung them in the cafeteria, instagram graphics, all of that,” Roberts said.

According to Preston, the event was successful in terms of participation and the amount of donations they received.

“Last year we did it with tissues because the school was running low on tissues, so we just donated those to teachers,” STUCO secretary Brandon Sikes said. “This year, we’re partnering with [Just Food] for a food drive. Participation is still low because it’s a new event, but it’s increasing from last year and that’s all we can really hope for.”

STUCO Sponsor Brittney Cummings hopes for more projects in a similar vein to the March Madness bracket, including upcoming events and plans for the future of STUCO.

“We have Great Green Help, which is more a focus on the environment, and that’s coming up and it’s open to all juniors. We’re hoping all of our juniors will get involved and sign up, and that’s happening Friday, April 19th,” Cummings said. “We’re also going to be attending one of the middle schools and having some conversations around mental health,” … . We’d definitely like to get involved in some more of those projects when we have the opportunity.”