As the annual food drive hosted by Interact club came to an end, Philip Pelzer’s advisory had the most amount of donated items for the third year in a row. This caused Westerville North High School to come in second place in the district totaling over 6000 food items donated. The question is how did North go from 12 items on the first day to over 6000 on the fifth day? Each year the winning advisory is offered the opportunity to get free donuts the following Monday which is supposed to be what drives the students to want to donate more food. One of the ways that Westerville North accomplished it was from Pelzer himself bringing in 500 food items.
“Now that I have a freshman advisory, I didn’t want to lose a third year in a row. When I had juniors and seniors they would go out and buy items,” Pelzer said. This came as a surprise due to the fact that when asked, two out of four seniors said that they didn’t plan on donating food and that they never donated. One out of four said that they would think about donating but likely wouldn’t. This was thought to be because juniors and seniors have the money and resources to go buy their own donuts unlike freshman and most sophomores.
“Maybe because seniors are older they might have more money to buy and donate food,” Kierran Schmidt (2024) said.
On the other hand “seniors are on their way to college so they might be saving money for food when they move into their dorms,”Alex Turk (2024) said. When asked, the majority of the freshmen and sophomores said that they didn’t plan on donating this year but would donate in future years. Pelzer’s theory of who’s likely to donate might be correct.
Something that can confirm this theory is the fact that the juniors and seniors that did plan on donating, already donated in a previous year. This is probably due to the fact that they want the chance to beat Pelzer. For example Thomas Denny’s advisory is a senior advisory and for a day or two they donated more food than Pelzer’s advisory. This is probably what pushed Pelzer to donate 500 food items himself. On day one, Westerville North donated a total of 12 items, possibly due to the fact that no one remembered to bring food over the weekend.
It could also be due to the fact that some students just didn’t care enough to donate. Some students were motivated to donate by the incentive of free donuts which is what contributed to Westerville
North going from 67 food items on the second day to just over 300 on the fourth day. Something else that contributed to that was Pelzer wanted to keep bragging rights for the third year back to back. Though Westerville North did not win the food fight, everyone was a winner in their own way. Westerville North donated over 6000 food items as a school and all the schools that donated totaled a lot more than 6000 and it was all given to those in need.
