The Olympian

Issue date: 3/12/08 Section: Campus

Former Olympic College student Seleste Robertson, teamed up with Phi Theta Kappa and designed a program called Bundle Up, a series of campus-wide warm-clothing drives for homeless and low-income families of the community.
Robertson said that as she was taking courses at the University of Washington Tacoma campus, a leadership class required her to come up with a community project and follow through with it. Robertson is a former member and officer of OC's PTK branch and her husband, Donald Robertson, is the group's current adviser. Seeing an opportunity, Seleste Robertson decided to propose her clothing-drive idea to the group's current officers.
The proposal was accepted and the first warm-clothing drive of Bundle Up began Feb. 25 and will continue until Friday.
PTK's role in Bundle Up is to implement the drives on the OC campus. A recent flyer advertising the drive said that PTK is looking to collect new and gently used gloves, hats, scarves, sweaters and coats. Drop off points for the drive are the big red boxes located in the entryway of the Bremer Student Center and outside BSC 115, the PTK office.
Dawn Michele Martin, PTK officer, worked closely with Seleste Robertson and used her knowledge and connections with the city to the benefit of the program.
The goal of Bundle Up is to have two warm clothing drives a year, in March and October, and to partner with local community outreach programs willing to present the homeless with free and obtainable warm clothing.
Though no community partnerships have been finalized, Martin has been scouring the community for possible options.
So far, PTK has collected multiple bags of warm clothing including men's leather jackets and Columbia fleeces.
"I think it is a good way to help people for a long term," OC student Thia Riddle said. "Clothing is something they can keep forever. It is more personal than just giving them money."
Fred Anderson, PTK president for the up-coming spring quarter, said that he and the other officers discussed advertisement for Bundle Up at their last meeting.
The main advertising technique that PTK used for Bundle Up was distributing flyers. Other ways that the group got the word out was through sending mass emails to the campus and word of mouth.
Some OC students said they would have liked to see more advertisement for the drive.
Students Andrew Smith and Tucker Moran hadn't caught sight or wind of the drive until it was more than halfway over.
"I think it should have been announced more," Smith said. "Maybe the Phi Theta Kappa leader could make a speech about it in the BSC. They could host a program about it. Make it public."
Donald Robertson took a more optimistic approach, setting the tone for the rest of the drive.
"I think this one, you know, little step that we are doing (for the community) is going to make a difference," he said. "If we get 100 items and five items per person, there's 20 homeless people that will be warm. That's good, end of story. I'd like it to be that every homeless person will have at least something."

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