10-12-2001
		YES hands out cookies to be neighborly Everyone's favorite treat brings neighbors together.

by Becca Morrison

Staff Writer

Youth Excited to Serve (YES) baked chocolate chip cookies from 110 rolls of dough on Saturday morning. Approximately 200 neighbors of the college were to be the recipients of these plates of cookies.

``Our goal was to make 2,000 cookies, and we got close, with the exception of the burnt ones,'' Katie Van Keuren, co-chair of YES, said.

Last year, YES did the same outreach, distributing cookies in the neighborhood behind the Fieldhouse, but they only reached about 20 houses. On Saturday the excited youth determined to reach as many as 200 homes.

At 9 a.m. last Saturday, 15 people got to work baking the cookies in various coffee kitchens on campus. They slaved away until about 12:30, with only one mishap (not including slightly burned cookies).

At about 10 a.m, two YES members were baking in a Schultze coffee kitchen when something in the oven caught fire. Consequently, the fire alarms went off and the entire Schultze-Eldersveld dorm was evacuated.

It turned out that part of a chicken had been left in the oven from a previous meal and the YES group had been unaware of its presence. The fire was quickly extinguished and students resumed their activities.

The goal of YES's cookie baking -- both this year and last -- was to show the surrounding community that ``we're not isolationists after all,'' they wrote in Friday's Student News.

Julie Dyson, a member of YES, described the goal as to reach out to the greater community and to show them that Calvin cares. The idea was to make friends with the community.

``We are Calvin students. We are part of an organization. We just wanted to say hi, if there's anything you want us to do, we're here to help in any way we can,'' was the distributors' general greeting to the neighbors.

The cookies were packaged in tens. Each package was attached with a friendly note explaining why they were handing them out. A total of eight people hauled the cookies to cars and drove up and down streets through five blocks in the area. They initially separated into four groups of two, but as the day wore on some groups split and people individually knocked on doors.

The student's reception at various houses differed. Sometimes the YES members were welcomed warmly and ended up chatting with the people for five to 10 minutes. One group actually received an invitation to dinner the next week.

But some people answered the door, saw random people on the step who looked like they were selling cookies, uttered words like ``busy'' and promptly shut the door.

``I think the people we talked to were most surprised at the fact that we weren't selling anything,'' Van Keuren said. ``They kept wondering what the catch to our kindness was.''

By the end of the day, the eight students were exhausted and had to call it quits with 20 packages of cookies left. Overall though, they felt successful in accomplishing their main goal to reach out.

However, since Calvin stresses community so much, they said that they wished more Calvin students had met each other through the actual baking experience. As it turned out, many people ended up baking alone.