GHS Senate partners with Salvation Army

Members of the Gaffney High School Student Senate help load packages onto a truck Monday morning. The Gaffney High School Student Senate could give a few lessons in cooperation to their elected counterparts this Christmas. The 150-member group has partnered with the local Salvation Army to provide gifts for local children.

“We provided Christmas for 103 children,” said Katie Ramsey, a tenth grade English teacher and faculty sponsor for the student senate. “There are really two groups of student government here at Gaffney High and the student senate is the one that is more community service-oriented. We have 150 kids in the organization, that’s 75 senators and 75 alternates.”

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its members to bring children’s toys, books, games, bicycles and clothing to the school between Dec. 1 and 12 and collected a mountain of gifts that filled the school’s rear commons area on Monday morning.

“We’ve done this all the way back to the year 2000,” Ramsey said as she hefted more boxes out the door to load onto a waiting truck. “I think we may have been doing it since before then, but that’s as far back as my records go. I would say this is our biggest service project each year. The students have done a fabulous job.”

Two of the student senators were using some early morning class periods to help sort and load the presents, as several others trickled in with more gifts.

“This is my first year in the senate,” said Sophomore Kelsey Krull. “Most of my presents were bought over the weekend. A lot of the people in my class didn’t have time to go shopping so I volunteered to do it for us. I took up some money and went and got stuff on Saturday. It worked out great that people were willing to donate because I work at Fatz and I don’t get paid until this Friday which is after the deadline.”

Several bicycles were wheeled by as Krull went over the list of presents she had found while maneuvering through Christmas crowds.

“I bought two outfits, three dolls, gloves, shoes, a scarf, a toboggan and a book,” she said. “And I got a card that was from our whole class and got everyone to sign it. I really think this project is important because all these kids get presents from our first-period classes. And this is the only Christmas they get. To them, these five or six things are going to be great.”

Krull’s fellow senator, Freshman Terrica Oglesby, also felt the project had the most impact on the community.

“People should realize and be thankful for all they get at Christmas,” she said. “I bought a baby doll with a cradle, and some clothes. I also bought a hat.”

But the Senate’s generosity won’t end with Christmas.

“In the coming year we’re also going to be working with the March of Dimes and the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life,” Ramsey added.