Kathryn Walters |
Like many UP students, junior Joe Tomassi was left with extra Commons meal points near the end of the spring semester last year, and chose to spend his points on food and drink he didn’t need so he could get his money’s worth from his meal plan. However, he was left with a bad taste in his mouth.
“I just bought a huge case of drinks for 50 points and I was like, ‘why did I just do this? I have no need for this,’” Tomassi said.
In a spur of the moment, Tomassi and like-minded sophomore Kate Miranda decided to start a Commons food donation program, where students could buy food from the Commons with their meal points, like granola bars and pre-packaged sandwiches, to make sack lunches to donate to Portland’s homeless population. Last spring, Tomassi and Miranda, though they were shorthanded, distributed about 120 sack lunches to people on the streets in downtown Portland, and the success of their event inspired them to make it even better this year.
“It was literally me and him (Tomassi) walking around downtown with crates in our hands and walking up to people and taking the time to say ‘hey, do you want a lunch, are you hungry,’ and I think that people really appreciated that,” Miranda said. “It was kind of cool to go down and walk around and see the city that we’ve lived in but not really paid attention to.”
Yesterday, today and tomorrow in Bauccio Commons from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Tomassi and Miranda are collecting students’ food donations. Yesterday and today, students had the choice of either buying the packaged food themselves and donating it, or directly donating any extra meal points to the program through Bon Appetit. Tomorrow, students can still buy food with their points and donate it. According to Tomassi, after the donations period is finished, Bon Appetit will add up all the points and donate that number of points worth of food.
Miranda appreciates Bon Appetit’s willingness to help her and Tomassi with their program, as typically, meal plan points that are unspent at the end of the school year go back to Bon Appetit.
“The Commons is so accommodating,” Miranda said. “Last year they gave us boxes, they let us use any tables we wanted, they helped us carry stuff to our car. They’re so on board with helping out.”
Tamalynn Flanagan, operations manager of the Commons, said she and the Commons staff are happy to help Tomassi and Miranda with whatever they need.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Flanagan said. “We don’t want everything to go to waste, so we just want to make it an easy transition for everybody and be able to help out like that.”
Students’ involvement in the program doesn’t have to stop at the Commons, however. Next Sunday morning, Tomassi, Miranda and a group of volunteers will be packaging all the food into sack lunches, and will head downtown to hand them out to the homeless that afternoon. Any leftovers that don’t make it into the sack lunches will be donated to Portland Rescue Mission and St. André Bessette Catholic Church, which both offer assistance to the homeless population in Portland.
Tomassi said this is a special service opportunity because it offers a chance for students to be active helpers in the Portland community.
“People can get very involved with the entire process, and it’s very hands-on in terms of the actual service,” he said. “If people were just donating points and the Commons took it from there, yeah you’re helping, but it’s not as personal.”
Despite last year’s success without much help, Miranda and Tomassi have been working to improve their program. They hope to double the number of sack lunches donated from last year and have been promoting their program on Facebook and across campus. Since Tomassi and Miranda are both in ROTC, their ROTC friends are lending a hand, and so are the staff of Kenna Hall, who have made this program a hall service project. They’re also expanding the territory they plan to cover to include a greater area of where Portland’s homeless tend to gather, from the Waterfront and the edges of the Pearl District to Burnside Bridge.
Sophomore Bella Romero, a community assistant in Kenna Hall, decided to help her dorm get involved in this project because many residents were coming to her with questions about what they should do with their extra meal points. She said many Kenna residents are eager to help out.
“I think people for the most part are really excited for it because we don’t want all the points to go to waste, especially considering they’re already paid for,” Romero said. “I know there are a lot of Kenna girls who still have a thousand points or so, so we’ve been encouraging them to start buying things early.”
Ultimately, Miranda and Tomassi hope to make this program an annual event, and ideally, become a school-sponsored event after they both graduate in a few years.
“The hope is that we can create continuity so people can carry it on,” Tomassi said. “I don’t think there’s never going to be a time when people don’t save their points or don’t eat very much and have hundreds left unless they completely change the points system. So there will always be an opportunity for it.”
Food donations: April 9-11 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Bauccio Commons
Donate food/points: April 9-10, donate food on April 11.
Packaging food into sack lunches in Kenna Hall basement: Sunday, April 13 at 8:30 a.m.
Head downtown to pass out lunches: Sunday, April 13 at 8:30 a.m.
For more information on how to volunteer, email tomassi15@up.edu or miranda16@up.edu. Link to Facebook page.
