By Jade Myers/campus editor
Obtaining professional clothes can be costly for students: suits, ties, dresses, belts and shoes.
“All those things matter because that’s what makes an outfit and helps you make that first impression, a good first impression,” TR Phi Theta Kappa member Dezirae Rodriguez said.
PTK spent this semester collecting donations to help get more variety of professional clothes for students that is now available at TR career services. Career services has had the professional clothing closet, but with the help of PTK, it is fuller than ever.
“There are a lot of students that aren’t able to work,” PTK president Melissa Burger said. “We have a lot of homeless students, so just providing them with something to make them feel good and feel extra special for, even if it’s an evening, is what we were looking for.”
Their organization found out about the professional clothing closet at the beginning of the semester and decided they wanted to help career services gather professional clothing so students could have more options available to them.
“Being that we come from a community college, we do understand that finances are a huge issue with students, and we realize that these issues are something we can actually tackle,” PTK member Gage Evans said.
They set up donation boxes all around campus as well as having a table set up where PTK members would take donations and talk to people about what the donation was for.
PTK did the clothing drive also as part of their honors and actions program, which is one of their main cornerstones, Evans said.
“This spring, we’re actually putting on the clothing drive, and in the fall, we’ll do all of the actual research and development – see how we helped and affected other students as well as the community members,” Evans said.
After the research is done, they will put it all together and submit it to the national organization for a contest.
The clothing closet is available to students from every campus as well as the community.
“We really wanted to make that mark on people, that as Phi Theta Kappans, that we want to do our best to help you succeed,” Rodriguez said.
