In this year’s Battle of the Valleys rivalry against Saginaw Valley State University, Grand Valley State University proved itself superior in football.

And that’s where the praise stops.

The other half of BOTV is an annual fundraising competition where each school spends a week trying to raise as much money as possible for a local charity of their choice. This year, GVSU mustered a whole $12,500 compared to SVSU’s $40,088. This marks the lowest amount GVSU has raised since 2005, and only $3,000 will actually make it to Student Advancement Foundation to buy more art and physical education supplies for Grand Rapids Public Schools.

The Student Senate set its sights high this year with a record-high goal of raising $35,000. The student body fell far short of that goal and most of the funds we did raise will go to cover the Student Senate’s costs in executing different events throughout last week.

Though their student body stands at less than half the size of ours, SVSU managed to raise $27,588 more than GVSU. This averages out to each Laker contributing about 51 cents and each Cardinal giving $3.82. Even considering the poor college student’s budget, it doesn’t seem too much to expect GVSU students to give a bit more than 50 cents to a charity supporting local schools.

There’s not much else to do after this embarrassing attempt at fundraising and competition except use it to fuel our drive to redeem ourselves next year. GVSU needs to take some initiative and show interest in the more worthwhile charity aspect of BOTV instead of only caring about the football game. There’s nothing wrong with having pride in our good football team, but it would be nice if there was more to celebrate in BOTV than just that.

The other possibility to amending the lack of support for the SAF would be to continue our fundraising efforts until we meet the Student Senate’s $35,000 goal, regardless of how long it takes. But that would take some new initiative and more participation from the student body as a whole to keep round two from becoming another failed attempt.