Samantha Cox
Guest Writer
May 20, 2024
SPLAT - Mr. Davis (left) and Mrs. Prokai (right) were pied with whip cream after gaining the most amount of points for the Penny Wars fundraiser.
Conflict rose between teachers, each competing to raise the highest amount of pennies and the lowest amount of silver coins and dollar bills to avoid the punishment of being pied in the face.
SafeBAE, a club dedicated to raising awareness and teaching about sexual assault, raised over a thousand dollars during the March Penny Wars fundraiser. The victory of the fundraiser was not shared by three unfortunate souls who raised the most money via cash and silver coins. On March 21, Rachel Prokai and Nick Davis were pied in the face. A few days later on March 26, James Quirke was pied in the face as well.
“A couple teachers took it really seriously,” Erin Ondrusek stated, “It was more of a competition between the class and pushing them rather than a class against another class.”
Ondrusek, the club sponsor, described the results as way bigger than last year, stating that it was ten times the amount. Even though she was the sponsor, she was not the one who organized this year's success.
“I expected it to go better than last year, but I didn't expect us to raise as much as we did this year, “SafeBAE President Ava Legeay explained, “I was pretty surprised.”
Legeay is the main mastermind and founder behind all of the club's success in the past two years. This is her last year at the school as a senior and has certainly left her mark in the club.
“We knew we wanted to have more teachers than last year, so we emailed about thirty teachers,” Legeay said, “We started with teachers who participated last year, and then went on to contact teachers we thought students would donate to.”
Legeay needed to buy individual jars to collect the pennies that all the teachers raised, which Legeay and other officers passed out during core sessions preceding the fundraiser. SafeBAE officer Alyssa Wininger spent a lot of time developing fliers and creating a social media post to promote the fundraiser and club as a whole.
“We will probably try to get more teachers involved,” Jordyn Standridge explained, “We felt like the competition was mostly between Prokai and Davis and everyone else was just kind of in the background.”
When asked, Standridge, Ondrusek, Prokai, and Legeay all agreed that to improve the fundraiser in the following years is to increase awareness. They also mentioned that their goal would also be to spread more awareness to the students in the school and gain more media exposure on platforms like RockTV.
“I would only have one person pied,” Quirke stated, “But it would be based on money earned, so whoever earns the most money gets to pick who is pied.”
Quirke suggests that in order to improve the fundraiser they should remove the entire concept of pennies. Using himself as an example that if he were to raise the most money we would choose which other participant he would want to be pied instead of competing for the lowest amount of cash and silver coins.
“Mr. Davis just wanted to see [Prokai’s] complexion ruined,” Quirke said, “He just wanted to see her with a bunch of zits.”