By Raffaela Kenny-Cincotta, News Staff
Who knew making sandwiches could be so fun?
In the bustling Curry Student Center, Northeastern’s Circle K Club, a community service group, held its annual PB Jam on Tuesday with the goal of making 3,000 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in two hours to benefit 15 homeless shelters in the Boston area. There was a light, fun vibe among the estimated 100 students who lined long tables in the student center food court, assembling sandwiches from large piles of white bread, peanut butter and grape jelly. As they stacked the sandwiches, they swayed to music coming from large speakers.
Circle K President and senior political science major Will Bradford stood among the crowd of student volunteers, wearing a pair of peanut butter-drenched gloves.
“The annual PB Jam is basically funded through the Student Activity Fund and includes volunteers from Circle K and other schools, as well as Northeastern Greek life,” he said.
Notheastern’s Circle K club has 140 members, Bradford said. Some of the aforementioned non-Circle K PB Jam volunteers were from nearby Simmons College, Bridgewater State University and Northeastern’s Kappa Sigma and Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternities, he said.
“I like to get involved with Circle K as much as I can,” Jordan Meyers, a freshman business major, said, “and this especially seemed like a great goal.”
Freshman mechanical engineer, Meghan Emmons and her boyfriend, Chris Munz, a member of the US Navy who is visiting Emmons while on leave, decided to spend some of their time together participating in the PB Jam.
“I did a lot of volunteer work in high school,” Emmons said. “And I think it’s just a really worthy cause.”
The Circle K International website trumpets the group as “the premier collegiate and university community service, leadership development, and friendship organization in the world.” Internationally, the group has more than 12,600 members.
“Our official goal is to change the world one child and one community at a time,” Bradford said.
And though he said he thoroughly believes in the PB Jam’s goal of feeding Boston’s homeless, the classic lunchbox staple wouldn’t be his first choice of snack.
“I actually don’t like the jelly,” he said with a laugh. “I like peanut butter though.”
