French Club’s sells flowers as part of traditional fundraiser
Navya Kaur
Staff Writer
Selling flowers has been a longstanding tradition for American High School’s French Club. Established many years ago, the club’s annual fundraiser called Summer Send-offs took orders for carnations and roses from May 19 to May 23 at SAC.
While the majority of the student population paid for their flowers during French Club’s fundraising week, about 15 other students took advantage of the club’s pre-ordering method, introduced for the first time this year.
“I feel like the pre-order method was moderately successful as many of these people ordered multiple flowers and this was an easy way for them to get all their messages in,” French Club president Lucy Huang (12) said.
Since the flowers are to be delivered a week before school ends during read period (Wednesday, June 4th), many students took the opportunity to write thoughtful goodbye messages to their teachers, friends, and significant others.
“I thought the messages were a cute idea,” sophomore Aneha Singh said. “It wasn’t original, but whoever will get them [will] feel really appreciated and that’s what is so sweet about them.”
Including messages with the flowers has always been part of the traditional fundraiser, but because of pricing, the French Club was forced to switch out sunflowers for roses this year.
“Price was definitely a factor, as other flowers were significantly more expensive and we would therefore had to charge more to sell them,” Huang said. “Colors were also another factor, as both carnations and roses have a wide variety of colors, while with other flowers would be limited to only a few shades.”
While in previous years sunflowers have been sold with positive feedback from students, the substitution of roses this year seems to link more closely to French culture. Roses are considered a symbol of love, so they are often associated with Paris and its romantic culture.
“Flowers are a simple but elegant way to demonstrate a range of emotions from friendship to love to nostalgia, and since the French pride themselves on expressing their emotions, it seems fitting for French Club to sell flowers,” Huang said.
Roses were sold at $2 each, whereas 10 roses were sold $15. Carnations were less expensive and each sold for $1, making a bouquet of a dozen carnations $12.
Eagle Era 