When Valentine’s Day approaches, individuals spend hundreds of dollars buying their significant others gifts to make them feel special on the special day. Like a significant other, Saint Leo uses their allocated funds to cater to the heart throbs, their students. Leo Love Week is dedicated to the students; therefore, various activities and free items, such as Stuff – A – Plush, stuffs away the stress between classes to stuff love in these adorable furry friends.
The idea of Stuff – A – Plush first struck the eyes of the Campus Activities Board (CAB), a subsection of the Student Government Union (SGU), members at the activities conference held every year in Tampa where they get activities ideas.
“They are nice, soft, high quality animals and felt like it’s something the students would love to do,” said Tara Centeno, assistant director of Student Activities.
Centeno said the school gets money to fund the various activities, such as Stuff – A – Plush. She indicated it is solely from the students’ activities fee that is a part of the tuition. In addition, they get special discounts from the vendors for the activities and they save money by collaborating with different schools in the area.
When asked if students knew how the school gets the money to fund huge events, many students like Kayla Corday, a freshman psychology major, said they knew the university allocated the funds from the tuition but they were unaware of the process for having an event like Stuff – A – Plush.
Every week the school always partakes in activities that take place on campus in order to relieve the stress and tension from the students.
“Last semester a student was so stressed from an exam she just flunked and she decided to Stuff – A – Plush. She then told me that it makes her so happy and that she needed to step away from classes as she had a really tough time,” Centeno explained.
One of Saint Leo’s core values is Community in which faculty, staff, and students become like a family through activities such as Stuff – A – Plush. Another core value is Integrity. Centeno discussed the process of attending Stuff – A – Plush in which students must check in using their IDs so that each student is limited to one stuffed animal. However, some students were able to cheat the system by either taking two animals or coming back for a second time.
“People shouldn’t be rude and abuse the system like that,” Centeno said.
When asked, Centeno said the importance of having activities such as these and explained that, “It’s something fun that gets you excited about being here at Saint Leo. It breaks in your day that will relieve your stress.”
On the day of the event there were long queues in front of the Student Activities Building (SAB) Loggias. It was surprisingly one of the few nice, sunny and warm days of the semester as the toys warmed the hearts of people who were happily stuffing them. Many of the people interviewed said that they made one for themselves. However, Brandysha Russell, a biomedical major, said that there had been a couple in front of her that made a toy for each other. No one was really aware of the purpose of the event, they just thought it was nice to possibly cuddle with a handmade toy.
