Zara Khan

Staff Writer

Who doesn’t love Starbucks? The warm coffee, iced frappuccinos, delicious pastries—there is something for everyone at Starbucks. But for most Latin School students, Starbucks is not just a coffee shop; it is a way of life. If the local Starbucks were to shut down, the entire school could possibly be in chaos. So when Latin’s Free the Children club announced their classic fundraiser to raise money for children around the world through selling Starbucks to students, it seemed like a perfect plan.

The idea behind the fundraiser is to have students write down what drink or pastry they wanted from Starbucks, have them pay in advance and then, on a specific day for each grade, have the orders waiting in the cafeteria. The idea proved to be successful in the beginning, as students signed up for drinks they wanted with club members of Free the Children in their grade. In the freshman hall, students were buzzing with excitement of Starbucks being delivered to the cafeteria.

Drinks were given to different grade levels on different days, but this caused confusion among some grades because students had not been told the drinks would be given on different days, and they would search the mess of drinks looking for their names. Other students had not heard that it was their day to receive drinks, and many students ended up warming their cold drinks at the end of the day.

In the freshman grade, students often accidentally took other students’ drinks, which happened to me. I had heard that it was the day freshman would be receiving their drinks and I eagerly ran to the cafeteria only to find a mass of drinks, but none with my name. This happened to another fellow freshman who was at the cafeteria at the same time. She also could not find her name and out of frustration took a drink which belonged to someone else.

This reaction was very common among the freshman grade and caused lots of confusion with people receiving their drinks. One freshman in Free the Children, who asked to remain anonymous, said, “Students would take each other’s drinks and then complain to me that they could not find their drink demanding a refund.” This student behavior seems to show that we as a community are not as honest as we could be when it comes to these little things, even though the fundraiser had altruistic intentions.

Many students, myself included, had paid a lot of money for their drinks, only to not receive a drink. Students had talked about refunds for the drinks they did not receive, but no student I talked to has actually received a refund. The idea of getting a refund for not receiving a drink shocked me, as the whole purpose of the fundraiser was for students to help other children around the world. It is annoying and upsetting that students did not receive drinks they had paid for, but the club should not be responsible for other students taking drinks.

Maybe a take away from this year’s fundraiser is that students should do the right thing and not just think about themselves. This fundraiser proved to be successful through the amounts of money it raised, but many students felt dissatisfied with the money they felt was “wasted.”  Students should feel happy either way knowing that the money they used to purchase Starbucks went to help children around the world. That, to me, sounds better than a frappucino.