Switch Day was back again this year at Lake Park, this time taking place at both East and West campus.
Aimed at raising money for women’s education in Africa, Switch Day functions as a fundraiser and activity for students to participate in as they buy tickets to switch out of a class, being able to spend the period with friends or even simply enjoying a free period.
With the selling of tickets at both campuses this year, the founders of Switch Day, Abbi Rusin (LP ‘27), Maanya Haldwania (LP ‘27), and Tiya Tennetti (LP ‘27), had hoped to double the ticket sales. After lowering the price from $10 to $5, the turnout needed to be at least twice as last year’s to meet their fundraising goal.
“We ended up making 103 total sales so we did not meet our goal,” Abbi said. “Honestly, it was due to the fact that we only had two days of selling.”
With uncontrollable circumstances such as weather, the Switch Day crew didn’t have as much availability for ticket selling this year.
“We were selling and then there was a snow day, and then we weren’t allowed to sell anything on Monday, leaving us with only 2 days of selling,” Abbi said.
However, this isn’t an entire loss as the data shows that next year’s Switch Day may be able to raise more money, given that they will be able to sell tickets for a longer period of time.
“Considering last year we only had 13 sales in the first two days and we brought that number up to 103 in the first two days this year, we call that a very big success,” Abbi said.
While Switch Day this year didn’t meet the crews’ expectations, it certainly won’t cast a shadow on the future of this fundraiser.
“We understand that there were circumstances that we could not control and we are very hopeful that if we run it next year we would get the most turnout we’ve ever seen,” Abbi said.
Along with this, Abbi and her collaborators are looking to improve upon the fundraiser in the future.
“We would change Switch Day in the future by mixing up the activities you can do to make it more fun and enjoyable in school and obviously having more than two days of selling.”
