News Editor

A long line of a mix of students, staff and faculty extended all the way from the food pantry to the front of the student union as 17,000 clamshells of raspberries were distributed.

Just the prior day, the CSU Bakersfield Food Pantry had received a donation form Total Quality Logistics and Roundtrip Transport. The pantry sent out emails to let CSUB know that the berries would be distributed on Friday, Nov. 2 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Within an hour, the table the pantry had set up with boxes filled with raspberries, was nearly empty.

Graduate Student leader of the food pantry, Keith Alvidrez, was in charge of distributing the raspberries.

Alvidrez stated that the company delivered the clamshells to local Dollar Tree stores but then were returned because the berries did not meet their quality standards.

“They didn’t want that order and the company was looking online for a food pantry just so they can donate it to,” said Alvidrez. “They came across the CSUB Food Pantry and then contacted us and we took them in as donations.”

CSUB students Katelyn Driscolo and Estefany Henriquez were among the last lucky ones to get their hands on a box with 12 clamshells.

“I’ll definitely eat some right now and probably freeze half of them,” said Driscolo. “I’ll be adding them to my lunch this week.”

Henriquez said she would be using the raspberries in different foods. “I want to make raspberry pie,” said Henriquez. “This will be my first time making it so it’ll be fun.”

The pantry had been distributing up to two boxes per person at the beginning and only one towards the end because the large amount of people that showed up.

“This is the first time we get something this big,” said Alvidrez. “I hope that this gets attention so that big agriculture businesses would want to do something like this with us, too.”