This is yet another piece in the News about senior sacks. But it’s not an informational piece about the history and tradition behind the sacks, or an attempt to gauge students’ and the faculty’s feelings about the whole thing, or any other angle we’ve taken in the past.
Instead, it is a written proposition of something that we at the New Trier News believe the senior class, and potentially the entire New Trier community, can rally around.
For the uninitiated, senior sacks are backpacks donned by second semester seniors for, well, no clear reason.
Ranging from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shells to Yoda head cutouts (and just about everything in between), they’re the type of impractical book bags you’d expect to find at an elementary school, and that’s the point.
The tiny amount of space for books and other school materials within these backpacks symbolizes the workload (or lack thereof) for seniors, and when it comes to the exterior of the bag, the unofficial norm is that the more ridiculous-looking, the better.
Naturally we get a kick out of these senior sacks. There’s something about seeing a classmate walk in to 1st period on a Monday morning with Buzz Lightyear strapped to his/her back; it serves as a solid pick-me-up and reminds us that we are, in fact, finally seniors.
However, we can’t help but think about some of the costs of this practice. What happened to all of the completely sufficient JanSport and North Face backpacks that were used for the first 3 1/2 years of this person’s high school career?
What will happen to the visual atrocity that is on his/her back once its 4-5 month window of usefulness is over?
Thus springs an opportunity.
The mission of New Trier is “to commit minds to inquiry, hearts to compassion, and lives to service of humanity.” This approach is evident in many facets of student life. However, it’s typically integrated by faculty members. Student-led initiatives in which hearts are truly committed to compassion are few and far between, save for the already-established fundraising clubs (which, to their credit, do a nice job).
New Trier has a rich history of philanthropy. It makes a concerted effort to use its standing as a well-respected and financially stable institution to help less fortunate causes.
What better way to carry on this tradition, and establish a defining and lasting legacy for the Class of 2015, than by spearheading a positive twist on senior sacks?
And so we at the New Trier News propose this: a backpack drive.
There’s two seemingly ideal ways to go about it. The first is the “one for one” approach, popularized by TOMS: for every pair of TOMS shoes purchased, a pair of shoes is given to an impoverished child. TOMS later expanded this drive to include eyewear.
In theory, applying this method to New Trier could work; for every senior sack purchased, one backpack could be donated to a school in need in Chicago.
If this plan didn’t include the senior sack purchaser also paying for a regular backpack to be donated, properly stocking donated backpacks would be a good task for Student Alliance, Tri-Ship, Girls Club, Social Service Board, or any service-oriented club up to the task.
Another possible method is the basic charity drive approach: once a charity bin has been set up in a convenient location, say, the makeshift fundraising table in the main cafeteria, students with senior sacks could either drop off their previously used, normal backpacks for use at a school in need, or, towards the end of the year, drop off their actual sacks to be donated to an elementary or preschool.
By no means is this a fully developed idea. We think that active student support, combined with New Trier’s substantial resources, can develop the concept and lift this whole thing off the ground. It can be the signature of the Class of 2015, a philanthropic foundation to be built upon for years to come. And we can lay the groundwork.