De Anza hasn’t had a campus wide canned food drive in over nine years, but this hasn’t stopped the automotive technology department from striving to aid the local community. 

“When the campus stopped sponsoring a yearly canned food drive, we decided to keep it going here,” said Pete Vernazza, a tune-up class instructor.  

With a friendly competition between the tune-up, chassis and engine classes to see who could donate the most cans each year, this year’s total was over 3,500 cans of non-perishable goods for the West Valley Community Services Center. 

The inter-division competition seems to be a big factor in the amount of donated cans. Students would yell out random numbers and make disparaging comments about each others’ can collections, and occasionally accuse each other of cheating in a festive manner.  

This year’s contest winner was the chassis class taught by Randy Bryant, with a total of 1,500 canned goods. Bryant said that his class has won not only this year, but also eight out of the last nine years. “I’ve got some really motivated students,” Bryant said.

If his students are motivated, then Bryant is the motivator. “Our professor puts a lot of effort into getting us involved with our community,” said automotive technology major Cassiah McNeir. “He let us know all about the can drive on our first day of class. It was,  ‘Welcome to auto tech. There’s a can drive in November,'” said automotive technology major Ashley Albrecht .  

Albrecht and McNeir are just two of the motivated students who volunteered this year by going out into the community and asking for donations from businesses in the area.  Not only were they given 400 cans by one of the many businesses they visited, they also received donations that they could offer in a raffle, including a voucher for a room at the Cypress Hotel. Offering tickets for a drawing for each $20 worth of donations helped them collect even more.  

Students interested in donating non-perishible food cans to the auto tech department next year can visit the Auto Tech building around October and November between the hours of 7:30 a.m. and noon The West Valley Community Services Center accepts donations year round, and can be reached by calling 408-255-8033.