On May 9, Aragon students, teachers, and their family members gathered in the Giant’s AT&T stadium for a fundraiser hosted by Aragon’s Class of 2017.
“Ms. Francis was actually the one who thought of the fundraiser,” says Carolin Jia. English teacher Robynne Francis is the new senior class adviser. Although Francis is the senior class advisor rather than the junior class advisor, Francis is trying to prepare the junior class for next year. “They are currently juniors, and they need money going into next year … for prom and everything,” explains Francis.
“A lot of [Ms. Francis’s] friends and family are really big Giants fans,” says Jia. “So she thought … wouldn’t it be great if we could get the entire student body to get together? So she looked into it. Then we saw that we could buy an entire section, and we contacted the Giants and they were really supportive of us.”
Francis thought back to her time in high school for ideas. “We did it in my high school,” says Francis. “I went to El Camino High School in South City, and my English teacher set up that fundraiser. So when I became the senior class advisor, they needed a fundraiser to help them, and so I called [my English teacher] ask him how he did it.” Publicization was an important part of the process. “A lot of the publicizing was based on social media and word of mouth, so we made a whole bunch of Facebook events. A lot of Junior Class Committee members did stuff on Snapchat and Instagram,” says Jia. “We also collaborated with Leadership and the Renaissance class, so they created a week of [spirit] events for us….they would be giving out free tickets we gave them to promote the event.”
The fundraiser turned out to be extremely successful. “[We sold] about 320 [tickets], including all the tickets we gave away,” says Francis.
“We broke even at 200 and we made $2000 dollars profit,” says Jia.
However, some students who attended had some problems with the event. “The seats were at the very, very top, behind the screen, so we couldn’t even see the big screen,” says sophomore Megan Shu. “And we couldn’t even see who was batting or playing, so it was kind of bad.”
Some people also felt as if they were being “cheated” or “ripped off” by the fundraiser. “A lot of people didn’t want to go because it was $20, and on the ticket it said it was worth $9. People are like, oh, it’s only worth $9,” says Yang.
However, the values on the tickets did not necessarily reflect the actual value of the ticket at the time. “The price changes depending on how far in advance you buy. The face value of the tickets the day I bought them was 9 dollars, but when we sold them they were about $16 each,” explains Francis. “They’re not ‘worth 9 dollars’, they only cost that much when I bought them because I bought them in February.”
Many people also had positive things to say about the fundraiser. “It was fun, I had a lot of fun,” says sophomore Kayla Danao. “The fundraising idea was really good. I think our class [The Class of 2018] should do it next year.”
