Written by Rachael Bonoan, Biology Ph.D. Candidate
That’s just one of the cheers you would have 
heard if you were walking around Porter Square early one Saturday evening (November 21, 2015 to be exact). Jenn (Biology grad student) brought lots of energy—and thus, lots of donators—to the annual Graduate Student Council (GSC) food drive. Clint (Psychology grad student) kept warm—and received lots of hugs from strangers—by walking around in his red panda onesie (because, why not?).
On a more serious note, the annual holiday food drive is a GSC tradition. Every year around Thanksgiving, the GSC Community Outreach Chair (this year, that’s me!) rounds up volunteers 
to collect donations of non-perishable foods outside of Star Market in Porter Square. All donations are then brought to the Somerville Homeless Coalition. The Coalition’s Project SOUP (Share Our United Pantry) is a food pantry that hosts community suppers and distributes food donations to those in need. This year’s GSC food drive was such a success that we may have overwhelmed the Project SOUP volunteers…but in a good way!
This year, we had a total of 14 volunteers throughout the day, 11 of which were grad students representing various departments (in addition to Biology and Psychology, we had grad student volunteers from Physics, Economics, Computer Science and Drama). Those 14 volunteers collected 17 boxes of non-perishable food! At the food drive, we also received $197 in cash donations (which we turned into some of those non-perishable food items).
When our cash donations started piling up, a couple of volunteers would go into Star Market to use the cash to buy more non-perishable donations. At the suggestion of our GSC President, Jeremy, most of our cash donations went toward buying baby food—something most people don’t consider when donating to a food drive. At one point, Jeremy and I went into Star Market with $49.71 to spend on baby food. As we piled roughly $50-worth of baby food onto the conveyor belt, the cashier likely thought Jeremy and I were young, struggling parents with multiples (triplets?).
Aside from being able to donate 17 boxes-worth of food to Project SOUP, the best part of the food drive was meeting people from the community and seeing them get into the holiday spirit. We had one man who heard Jenn cheering from afar and told us that he didn’t need any groceries but he was going to go in and buy some just for our food drive. When he came out, he put 2 bags of groceries on our table while chanting “Donate! Donate! Donate!”
There were people who came out with whole shopping carts full of donations, whole shopping baskets full of donations, and one man even went home to clean out his pantry—he brought us three bags of canned goods, oatmeal, and rice. There were also a lot of kids who would shyly put a canned good or two on our table—one was dressed as an astronaut!
At the party, we had LOTS of candy, other snacks, and a costume contest! The first place winners of the costume contest came dressed as the characters from Pixar’s recent movie Inside Out. From left to right, Kasey, Dave, Jenn, Becca, and Kelsey are all affiliated with the Biology Department here at Tufts. Kasey and Becca are recently graduated master’s students, Jenn and Kelsey are 6th and 5th year Ph.D. students respectively, Dave is a graduate student at MIT and Kasey’s boyfriend. This year, the first place prize was a gift card to Foundry, a nearby restaurant in Davis Square (another possible future blog topic). Kasey—as Joy—was characteristically overjoyed that her group won the costume contest (notice her feet are a good few inches off the ground).
Our second place winner was on the other end of the Halloween spectrum—he was scary. Parading as an exorcist priest, the international Physics grad student went above and beyond for his first Halloween! The exorcist priest won a gift card to Diesel Café, a coffee shop in Davis Square for his prize. Among other characters, we also had pirates, a woodland nymph, Maverick, and Luna Lovegood show up at the party. (Sadness got really into her character for the group photo.) What I like most about GSC social events is that I get to get out of the Biology Department and meet grad students from other departments. At this party alone, there were grad students from Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, Drama, and more!