Seniors paint parking spots for Best Buddies fundraiser
Aidan Sheridan-Rabideau (12, HSU) poses with his completed, Monopoly-themed, parking space.
September 15, 2019
Manual seniors painted their parking spots for the first time ever this past weekend as a fundraiser for Best Buddies and Manual’s Unified sports teams.
Ms. Merritt Robinson (Social Studies), the sponsor for Best Buddies, organized the event which lasted from 2-6 on Saturday and from 11-3 on Sunday.
In order to paint their parking spots, each senior had to pay a $20 fee and had to get their design approved by Ms. Robinson.
The event had to be cleared by more than just the Manual administration.
“I had to contact Old Louisville and get approval, and I put together all the paperwork and presented it to Mr. Farmer, and told him what the money would be for, and he was good with it and on board,” Robinson said.
Many seniors were excited to be able to paint their spaces.
“I’m happy we got to do it this year because no other class before us has done it,” Mia Brietenstein (12, J&C) said.
“It’s great being the first generation to do so. And I’m also glad that we don’t have to paint over previous spots, like [future seniors] will have to do,” Roussell said.
Contrary to some rumors, there will be no power-washing of past years paintings.
“The next years [senior] will either have someone’s old paint, if they don’t want to paint, or they just start their base coat and start painting again,” Robinson said.
There have been efforts in the past to organize a senior parking space painting in the past, but they never made it through.
“Years ago, Ms. Cecil and Ms. Stottman had done a lot of legwork with this because they used to be class sponsors. And so I said, ‘Let’s try this again with the new principal’ and see if we can get it to work,” Robinson said.
She wishes for next year’s event to be much bigger than this year’s.
“Our vision for next year is to make it more of a full day thing and have a cookout, volleyball and cornhole,” Robinson said.
She also wishes for it to be more open to everyone.
“We’d like to make it more of an entire senior class thing. So even if you don’t have a spot, you can still come out and hang out with your friends,” Robinson said.
Being a form of test-dummies for the parking lot painting experiment, there were a couple issues: running out of paint and having trouble figuring out their spot theme.
“Don’t overthink it, because that’s something that I think I was worried about. I was like, ‘It has to be perfect, it has to be super clever, or super original,’ but just don’t over think it and it will come to you,” Breitenstein said.
That, and buy more than a quart of paint for a whole parking spot.
