Dakota Johnson

Munch Madness, a competitive food drive contributing towards the FISH food bank, was started by Morning Rotary. Although Central has not been involved with Munch Madness up until this year, it had been a goal of Morning Rotary to get the university involved.

“It’s another way for Central to get their name out there,” Janhvi Rana, Central’s Rotaract president, said.

According to Rana, brackets will be set up for the food drive based on “March Madness.” There will be 16 teams that will be composed of clubs or groups of people affiliated with the school. A few of those groups include ROTC Army and the campus clinic.

These groups will be scored based off of the amount in pounds that they bring in and teams will be disqualified. But if a team gets disqualified, it can still find another team to join.

“Originally, we were going to keep it going until finals week,” Rana said. “But now we’re going to prolong it up until the first Friday of April.”

Rana said that in the beginning phase of this year’s food drive, the plan was to collect from the community. But after the fire happened and destroyed the building where FISH was located, the rotary didn’t want to burden the town and decided to aim at Central.

People bringing food will be able to drop it off at the SURC pit and then it will be transported to the food to the food bank to get weighed in.

The next time people come to drop off food, they will be told how much their food weighed in during the first donation and where they stand in the competition.

Roger McCune, the director of FISH, said that the food that was brought in last year through Munch Madness was enough to last them through the summer.

“I’m just thrilled with what they’ve done,” McCune said.

McCune, who has been the director of FISH since 2006, was the first employee at FISH. All the workers there before him were volunteers and now there are five employees in all. The fifth was added after the fire occurred.

McCune said that FISH really needs more canned fruit, cereals and foods such as Hamburger Helper and Tuna Helper. They are also in need of produce such as potatoes and carrots.

McCune said Central students can use FISH as well.

“We’re concerned that there’s people who don’t know about us such as students and anywhere else. There could be people out there, if they’re not aware of us, that cut corners more than they should with nutrition,” McCune said.

“We’ve never had a university participate before,” Thao Luu, the Rotaract vice president, said.

Luu said that Morning Rotary found 16 local businesses that have come together to donate to FISH.

According to Luu, the rotary was only trying to collect about 7,000 pounds of food last year, and they ended up receiving approximately 14,000.

Luu said FISH’s goal is to raise 1,000 pounds this year and to receive more effort from both the community and the school to get more people aware of FISH.

“They still need support even after the fire,” Luu said.

The rotary is hoping to get Central students to not only donate food, but to help in the labor of building the new location for FISH and to help with the cleanup services.

McCune said that FISH will be relocated to its original location once construction is completed.