Yes, it’s that time of year again; fundraiser season. The most recent here at Lakeview is the Valentine’s Day Flower Sale where students are able to purchase a rose for their sweetheart or their friends at any lunch period now until February 7th.

I originally asked students what they thought about the fundraiser- were they participating? do they like the idea of it? is it too old school? I received a plethora of “No, I’m not participating, but I think it’s a cute idea” answers and decided to start a poll on the newspaper’s Twitter.

You can see in the slide show that there was an overwhelming no which made sense with my other data, but one thing didn’t fit- if people think it’s a cute idea, why aren’t they participating?

The negative response to this fundraiser isn’t the first time it’s happened. There has been a huge decrease in fundraiser participants through the years and it’s almost like the new trend. Now, there could be a few reasons why people aren’t showing their support and one of which is: it’s too much money.

This fundraiser, however, is relatively inexpensive. If you’ve seen the signs in the hallways you will notice that one rose is only $2.00 and you can get three for $5.00. That isn’t a lot of money whatsoever. It seems to be that students, especially juniors and seniors, don’t want to spend the money they make at work for silly little things like flowers.

It makes sense, who wouldn’t want to buy something for themselves instead of a flower for someone else? This begs the question: are the fundraisers too old fashioned? School have been selling roses for Valentine’s Day for decades and maybe times have just grown out of the tradition.

Laura Wood, 1th grade English teacher, suggested: “Could there be something else we could sell that is more modern and less expensive?” I would imagine that candy would be a good choice, but is it less expensive? Plus, plenty of other organizations sell candy bars throughout the year.

I took to Twitter again and this time asked a general “do you participate in school fundraisers?” question. To no surprise, there was yet again an overwhelming no. The next thing to do was to ask students to elaborate on their answer.

Junior Elisa Gomez said “No, I don’t usually participate in fundraisers because I’m just too lazy and I think they are overpriced.” Again the overpriced dilemma.

The real problem here is that money is the whole point of fundraisers! Maybe the problem isn’t the fundraiser itself, maybe it is the students. It seems that adolescents are becoming mature faster. Teens now know what it means to spend money and it isn’t just something that your parents supply you with. Whatever the cause, there needs to be a solution or at least awareness about the issue.

So now I ask you, are fundraisers worth it?