BASC students bless and serve community with FISH food donation

PLAINVIEW – What is BASC?

At Wayland Baptist University, BASC is an acronym for an entry level course — Better Achievement Strategies for College, but on Tuesday, Nov. 15, BASC meant a much more to students taking the class.

“BASC means Blessing and Serving the Community,” said Julia Nelson, a freshman from Canyon City, Colorado. She and another BASC student came up with the alternate acronym to describe the class project — collecting more than 2,600 non-perishable food items for FISH, Plainview’s Faith in Sharing House.

On Tuesday, students from two BASC classes sorted and loaded donated food for the drive across town to deliver two full loads to FISH.

“Yay! Y’all got quite a crew coming,” Beverly Wall, FiSH Board Secretary, said as she watched students arrive. “This will make such a difference because, with inflation and everything, our donations are down, and what we do purchase isn’t going as far. What Wayland is doing for us is just wonderful. We are just so thankful for this.”

Nelson said it was fun to come up with the acronym but that the real fun was helping others. It began with an email to students, she said.

“We advertised that we were trying to bless the community,” she said. “It’s nice to help other people, especially some that are struggling. It is nice to share Christ’s love to other people.”

Johnathan Lorenz, a freshman from McKinney, helped with loading, transporting, and unloading.

“What this means to me is that we are able to help the community and to give back,” Lorenz said. “It is an awesome opportunity for us as students to be involved. It is cool to get to do something like this.”

Kassie Lane, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs and Assistant Professor of Business, teaches BASC and helped with the delivery Tuesday.

“This allows the students to kind of get a feel for helping the community,” she said. “I love doing this in the fall because this helps families in our community during the holidays.”

The service project is part of the learning process, Lane explained.

“They come and donate and hopefully remember something from it,” she said. “It’s a freshman entry level course. We begin with how to be successful in college and end with this program.”