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: Butterflyfish

Panty raid

I run a law school organization that does public interest-y stuff. Our first effort of the fall fell apart, as sometimes happens. Our big event is in the spring. But we decided to hold an underwear drive for an organization that runs an emergency shelter for women.

Yes, an underwear drive.

By the time a woman finds herself in the shelter system, the undergarment situation is often pretty dire. And people don't usually think to donate underwear. We didn't think of this ourselves, actually. I got the idea from a speaker who visited our school.

So for about ten days, we ran an underwear drive. I had random people calling out to me in class -- "OMG Butterflyfish! I have underwear for you in the car!!" Most students were really great, and I had members of the faculty handing me bras in every size at inopportune times. The event got decent support for events of this type, and we felt ok about the donation we were eventually able to make.

However, I found myself sitting at the table explaining to perfectly normal, intelligent law students that yes, we were only taking new underwear. No, that means if you bought it and discovered it was the wrong size, we cannot take it if you have taken the tags off.

I actually had someone say to me, "Well I guess beggars can be choosers." Probably meant to be facetious, but still, it amazed me how little some people thought about the basic human dignity that is unworn underwear.

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Ha! NaBloPoMo thinks it can beat me with a weekend! I've got four hours left in the day to call this a Saturday post. Also, a shout out to the woman who made the whole event work, even though she has even less time than I do. You know, in case she ever reads this.

Full post as published by Butterflyfish on November 22, 2008 (boomark / email).