Community needs community. This has been the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s Honors Program mantra during this unprecedented time. With the influx of students contracting Covid-19 and having to quarantine or isolate in Clem Hall, support from the community – both campus and city – has never been quite as important. 

The idea began with Honors Council student Representative, Dylan Paprocki. It stemmed from a similar program being done from where his sister goes to nursing school, and he immediately thought, ‘why not have the same thing happen here?’ From there, it flew. Within two weeks, enough donations were gathered from their venmo and other social media efforts to help put together over one hundred care packages filled with both non essentials and essential items. From easy mac to coloring pages to boredom busters, these students truly thought of it all.

“We knew we were on a fast timeline. There are students already in Clem. We wanted to create a care package that shows we support them. We want to better their ten day stay,” Poprocki said. 

From then on, the next two and a half weeks became a rush of shopping and organizing. Students of all majors, from english majors helping write letters to digital design to business began putting ads out, soliciting donations from friends and family, all for it to come together into this project. By doing this, it gave Honors Students the chance to exercise leadership skills, it allows them to support other students during one of the most difficult medical, economic, and emotional times within recent history.

“2020 has been a fireball of upsets. Social, economic, medical, all sorts of unusual situations. There’s social unrest. There’s chaos in the political system, – no matter what side you’re on. During this time, it’s nice for people to be able to come together instead of falling apart,” said University Honors Program Director, Dr. Tanya Kam.

On Oct. 9, these students rapidly began preparing the care packages for the students in Clem Hall. The Honors Student Intern, Jake Krueger was amazed by the amount that had gone into this. After helping collaborate with the Honors Student Association, he was pleased with all the work everyone had put inis fast-paced project. 

“When we started the project, our goal was to deliver the care packages to as many people as we could. Now that Clem has started to die down a little bit, we’re definitely going to keep donating to the Warhawk Pantry, but we also want to start reaching out to the community now. We want to have a more far reaching effect to this than just the Whitewater campus community,” he said. 

Though their first round of care packages are already complete, they are still looking to be able to continue this project. They are asking for continual donations towards the food pantry, as well as their venmo. Their venmo is @UWWHonorsStudentAssociation-HS.