By J1 Reporter Grace Virgillito 

Throughout the month of September, each student and her family worked hard to achieve their goals for the annual Walk-A-Thon (WAT) fundraiser for Marian. The weeks leading up to WAT are filled with excitement, craziness, rumors, and most of all competition. People are expected to bring in $150 to meet the goal for WAT, but how “easy” it is to actually collect money?

Out of the 260 students who filled out the survey questioning the process of bringing  in the goal for WAT, 87 said it was easy, 111 said it was ok, 40 said it was hard but I got it done, 15 said it was too hard, didn’t meet personal goal, and 7 declined to answer.

What Junior Sophia Simmons has to say about the issue, “I think there is a different challenge for every individual student at Marian.”

The numbers retrieved from the poll were a major demonstration of pressure.  Many girls here can not afford to donate more than the necessity, let alone attend Marian at all. Though some students may receive money donated to them, not all students qualify for this special financial program, which helps bring in money for girls who can’t afford to bring in money. Although there is work-study, Marian requires a significant amount of donations throughout the year that require many girls to “mooch.”  This causes stress upon the girls who can not afford to donate any more money to WAT, and some still expect them to bring in even more. The pressure to bring in a certain amount of money may be too much for some girls to handle.