Tuesday, December 20, 2011 By Reann Dela Cruz Students work on building their canned-food pyramid. - Chronicle staff Advertising Canned food drive a success again (Dec. 20, 2011) -- Clark’s annual canned food drive brought about “oohs” — in both a good and bad sense — along with the occasional repetition of “STOP IT!” as the cans swayed left and right on the edge of their destruction Friday, Dec. 2. The 13th annual event provided Clark students with the opportunity to donate canned and other packaged foods to PATH Achieve, an organization assisting the homeless in Glendale and surrounding cities. “We were happy to help the needy,” said senior Syuzanna Hakobyan. “I like how we were able to use our competitive personalities to collect hundreds of cans and to raise awareness.” The competition was definitely in mind during the lunch-long event. “I had a mini heart attack every time the cans wouldn’t stand up straight,” said junior Erin Quiambao. Like Quiambao, many of the can-stackers felt the pressure brought about by the meticulous event. However, not every one’s hard work paid off. The winning stack once again belonged to Spanish teacher Julie Ann Melville’s fourth period class. The AP Spanish class, however, had fewer cans than their defeated competitors but still managed to create a final product that stood several cans taller than Escobar. Although strategy seems unimportant in a light contest, it’s what helped the winning class stack a stable and tall-standing product. “We won not because of the amount of cans we had,” senior Kevin Escobar said. “We won because we had a really good strategy and we were all determined to have Ms. Melville’s class win again.” According to the can-stacking senior, the fourth period Spanish class had devised a strategy prior to the beginning of the lunch-long competition. "We knew we didn’t have as many cans as the other classes did so we were just trying to build a stable enough base so we could just work on stacking the cans on top of each other and making it the biggest pyramid," said junior Yana Hakobyan. According to junior Evan Keum, the varying sizes of cans added to the already difficult process. “Not enough cans were the same size, and stacking them as if they were only made the stack lop-sided,” said Keum. In the end, all the classes were able to raise an estimated 400 to 500 cans and other packaged foods for PATH Achieve. “It felt amazing to know that no matter how many cans were collected,” said Hakobyan, “we were still able to help the needy in such a simple and easy way.”

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