BY NICK PLETT
The MHS Music Department is in need of money, as are many other departments in our school, due to the continually enervating recession. Funding for the Music Department’s assortment of trips and functions is necessary to keep it at its top-notch level. The concert band, the orchestra, the Force, both jazz ensembles and all the choir groups need outside money (the school budget could not possibly support all of these groups’ dire needs) in order to continue to perform both at our school and abroad.
This year, in order to attempt to raise money for the department, its chairs decided to raise money through a sale of fruit. The fruit sale included multiple choices of fruit boxes including tangelos, grapefruits, oranges or a mixture of all three. Prices for the fruit range from $15 to $35 and will be distributed by the sellers when the fruit arrives in December.
Now, this may seem like a benevolent way to raise money, and may even in fact prove sufficient in raising money for the Music Department, but this is not the most ideal way to go about the task.
Other groups, for instance the football team, require participants to carry around boxes of candy to sell to fellow students for only $1. Hockey players are required to sell ads for the annual MHS hockey magazine to local shops in order to raise money for the team’s trips, gear and ice time. FBLA famously distributes sour candies for five cents each. All of these methods, accompanied by various bake sales, present themselves as much more logical means to raise money for their respective departments, and require much less prodding and prying of customers to donate.
Although inevitably some people will want to purchase the fruit, most are reluctant to buy it in the middle of winter, especially when it’s been transported all the way from Florida. The fruit may taste as delicious as it looks in the photos , but chances are, it will not. Also, chances are, no one wants to lug around multiple 10-40 pound boxes of fruit all day and distribute it to those who were generous enough to support the cause.
There is no dispute that our Music Department is in dire need of any donations from school members, parents, teachers and townspeople to keep it running at such a high level. Our musicians are very talented and deserve all available opportunities to perform, whether that is during the Winter Recital, or in Washington D.C. on a weekend-long trip.
Incorporating students into the process of raising money for this department is also absolutely necessary and integral to attaining an appropriate amount of money. However, the way our Music Department has gone about this necessity was not in the strictest sense, the most logical way. I am sure that an equal amount of money could be raised from any other way of selling food or ads, as other entities in our school do, than selling fruit to fellow patrons. And, as a substantial amount of money could in fact be raised from this sale, was this really the most sensible way to go about it?
