by Alexa Rosas| staff writer
Jag Jam was the gathering of club booths, rides, food, and games, that was annually presented by the student council, but this year this festival is not occurring. While this may be sad for Johnson students who are just craving some fun, the cancellation of this fest is painful to many clubs that rely on Jag Jam for funding.
“It’s a little upsetting, because that was one of the major ways that the Spanish Club did fundraise money for their banquet,” said Jennifer Aranda, the Spanish Club sponsor.
But for many clubs, prospects for future fundraisers are thin and with the school year waning so is the hope for substantial funding.
“The fundraising at school is very limited and with some of the other organizations…are always having fundraisers, and they limit the fundraisers that we are able to have,” said Aranda, “We are going to try and find a way to compensate for the loss of Jag Jam…We are now in the process of looking into fundraisers that we could do at school, but it is a process and we don’t have a lot of time left.”
And while some clubs might struggle without the income from Jag Jam, Student Council sees other opportunities available instead of the annual event.
“Jag Jam, over the past two years actually lost money…We decided that our resources would be better used in other directions,” Student Council sponsor Leah Plumas said. “We are going to do a lot of teacher appreciation in these next nine weeks, some leadership training for potential student council applicants in the summer, and some resources are going to be used for the teacher training over the summer.”
There is even justification in the decision to cancel Jag Jam, because in many cases- opposite of the situation of the Spanish Club -many of Johnson’s organizations benefit very little from this small-scale fair.
“When we have gone back to the clubs and actually asked them if they had made money, most of them had not, a very minimal amount if any, but no Student Council will not do anything else this year that is going to substitute Jag Jam,” Plumas said.
Supporting the Student Council’s position is the choir’s stance on the end of Jag Jam, because choir, with all of its other fundraisers, benefits very little from Jag Jam.
“Honestly, it’s not a huge hit for us, because we don’t make a lot of money at Jag Jam anyway,” choir instructor Christine Brown said. “We have broken even and maybe made a little bit, but we’ve never done super well.”
