13th Halloween Canned Food Drive (HCFD) Guidelines

The Student Engineering Council (SEC) at the University of Texas at Austin is working with the Capital Area Food Bank to host the thirteenth annual Halloween Canned Food Drive. Last year, numerous engineering societies representing the College of Engineering participated in this competition to collect canned food donations from Austin area neighborhoods. The HCFD collected enough food for 8,619 meals from food and monetary donations last year. On October 25-26, 2008, all participating societies will “trick or treat” in areas around Austin and then meet on-campus at UT Austin for a weighing party. Prizes will be awarded to outstanding societies during the next SEC general meeting on Monday, October 27th at 7pm in ECJ 1.202.

Collecting Canned Food

• Societies may only collect bags from their assigned neighborhoods between Saturday, October 25 at 12 noon and Sunday, October 26 at 4 pm.
• Societies may choose to give or collect monetary donations. This will be accepted at the drop-off location.
• This year we are also doing a Virtual Canned Food Drive. There will be a link on the flier to the webpage where the resident is able to donate money virtually. On this webpage there will be a drop-box with all of the societies’ names for the resident to select when they donate online.

The HCFD committee will provide paper bags and electronic copies of fliers for canned food donations to leave on the doorsteps of homes in the neighborhoods. Societies may staple fliers to the bags. The distribution of bags/fliers will be left to the discretion of each society. Each society is allowed to distribute more than their allotted number of paper bags as long as they attain extra paper bags themselves (i.e. you can go to Whole Foods and get more, but we’re not going to give you extra).

A random lottery will be used to determine distribution of Austin areas for the trick-or-treating. Societies must only trick-or-treat in their assigned area. If a society is unhappy with the assigned area, it will be given one redraw at random from leftover areas. The society representative should email us to schedule their redraw. This one redraw will be available until Friday, October 17 at 4 pm.

Scoring and Prizes

1. Total Mass (33%)
2. Total Mass per Member (34%)
3. Total Monetary (33%)

These three rankings will be weighted to determine the winner of the grand prize of $200.

There will also be three other winners from each category for $100.

A society can only win in one area. (Order of categories: Grand prize, Total Mass, Total Mass per Member, Total Monetary)

Winners will be announced at the next SEC general meeting on Monday, October 27.

The number of members in each society will be based on the existing roster available at the Office of Student Life.

Questions and Disclaimer

***The HCFD Committee reserves the authority to disqualify any society for breaking the guidelines listed or for inappropriate competition. These rules are also subject to change by the Committee.***