The Forum

The holiday season is tradition­ally a time to be generous in spirit, time, and practice, and as law students with finals quickly ap­proaching, it can be easy to forget about the problems of others within the local community. So when organizations like the Multicultural Law Student Associa­tion (MLSA) or Phi Delta Phi do events like the Thanksgiving Baskets, it helps to portray our school in a positive light, which reflects positively on us all.

This year MLSA continued its tra­dition of providing Thanksgiving bas­kets for underprivileged families in the Valparaiso area. This is MLSA’s largest event of the year, and many of its mem­bers feel that it’s the most meaningful.

The event was hosted the night of November 18th in Tabor, and the baskets were delivered right before the Thanksgiving break on November 21st to the Hilltop Community Center. Dire economic times have hit Northwest Indiana and the Center especially hard this year; currently, it’s averaging two new families in need of assistance a week. In times like these, every little bit of charity helps.

Weeks before the Thanksgiv­ing Basket event took place, however, MLSA and other student groups from Valparaiso University School of Law were already hard at work organiz­ing this event. Through selling pizza at Chapel Break to hungry students in Professor Lind’s Civ Pro class to do­nating money themselves, MLSA and other groups put together the necessary funds to create these baskets and spread some much needed holiday cheer to lo­cal families going through a very tough time.

This year, the baskets contained a wide array of holiday foods. While the baskets were being stuffed, wrapped, and festively decorated, the volunteers placed everything from rolls to stuffing to marshmallows inside of them. In ad­dition to the side dishes, the baskets also contained coupons which the families could use to buy a turkey. Each basket contained everything anyone would need to have a very special Thanksgiv­ing holiday.

When all was said and done, ten huge baskets were ready to be donated. Each basket goes to a different fam­ily once delivered to the Hilltop Center – thanks to the hard work of MLSA and other VUSL groups, ten families got to enjoy a well-deserved Thanksgiving dinner.

David is a 1L and can be reached at Forum@Valpo.edu

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 1:50 pm and is filed under News.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.