On May 23, the gym doors promptly opened at 7 p.m. as over a hundred students, who had been fasting since 6 a.m., milled about, anticipating a night of fun and games at Fast For Awareness (FFA) to last until noon the next day. Only a few hours later, however, they filed back out, because several students were smoking marijuana at the event.

Key Club has hosted FFA for the past five years. Each participant must donate a minimum of $30, which goes to Action Against Hunger, an organization that prevents, detects and treats malnutrition. “The idea [of FFA] is to raise awareness,” Key Club supervisor and social studies teacher Arlyn Sharpe said. “Not everyone in the world has food options we have here in Palo Alto, and how often do you get to have a slumber party at school?”

This year, FFA took place on May 23, with 122 participants. Traditionally, participants engage in staff or student-donated activities such as video games, indoor sports, board games and movies until noon the next day, when they feast on a banquet of food provided by Key Club.

During the fast, participants are only provided with drinks. “We have on-site service projects and make sure that there are enough drinks for the whole time,” sophomore Key Club president Tommy Huang said. “[The point is] to experience a kind of hunger so you can see how long 30 hours is and how children around the world experience it all the time.”

All activities were cut short when students came forward and reported smelling marijuana near the boys’ bathroom. “I was first informed about the marijuana incident at around 11 p.m., and I was in shock because of the possibility of sending everybody home,” Huang said. “We talked it over with the chaperones and Mrs. Sharpe and the administration before deciding to give the perpetrators a chance to give themselves up.”

The chaperones and staff then announced that the event would end immediately, since they did not know who was in possession of the drug. “We had no choice but to shut [FFA] down,” FFA chaperone and science teacher Katherine Moser said. “We felt a need to call the parents and get the kids back to where they are safe.”

According to Huang, an anonymous student confessed to being in the illegal activity involved after hearing this announcement, but “our faculty advisor and chaperones and the board decided that this was insufficient to allow FFA to continue,” Huang said. Although the supervisors did not call the police, “they did the best they could with what they had,” Assistant Principal Phil Winston said.

Students were displeased with the early finish. “I was just angry that [the smokers] were that stupid to [smoke] in a confined area,” freshman FFA participant Leo Moley said. “We all had to suffer for what they did.”

According to Winston, the student’s parents were probably not in the best mood, either. “As a parent, if my son or daughter was somewhere else and I got a call in the middle of the night, I would have panicked,” he said.

Despite the complaints, Huang felt that the dismissal was the right thing to do. “I was upset that all the time the Key Club board had spent coordinating this event had been wasted for the most part, and that everybody would be disappointed about the closing of our event,” he said. “I do not wish to displease anybody, but in this case, pleasing everybody would have been the wrong decision.”

The staff later found some marijuana under the bleachers, but all students were gone by 1 a.m., according to Moser. Although the event ended early, students still received their 24 hours of community service and the monetary donations still counted. “[The students] did come to fast and do their part,” sophomore Key Club secretary Kevin Shin said. “So we are giving them the hours for their hard work.”

The following day, there was a “Breaking the Fast” luncheon for the participants at noon. According to Shin, gathering food from different sponsors took a lot of effort, and it would be wasted if no one ate the food. Some of the food sponsors included Costco, Mollie Stone’s, Fish Market and Hobee’s. Since only around 40 people returned for the feast, Key Club donated all of the leftovers to local food shelters.

Some students who did not attend the luncheon, such as Moley, decided to finish the fast, which was supposed to last until 12 p.m., anyway. “I thought it would be the honorable thing to do,” he said. “And I woke up at 11:50 a.m., so I just sat there for 10 minutes.”

Huang is unsure if there will be an FFA next year, as the Student Executive Council may not allow it after this incident. “If we are able to continue the administration of FFA, then we will have to check each person’s backpack or have them place their backpack in a certain area and they may only retrieve something when they ask for something and specifically show us what they retrieved,” he said.

So far, two students have been disciplined for illegal drug usage at the event and Winston is trying to find the other people involved. “This is a perfect example that shows it does not take a lot of people to ruin one event,” Winston said. “Sometimes it is hard for students to understand the gravity of their actions.”

Despite the smoking incident, FFA’s message still carried through to its participants. “I learned that it’s not easy to be hungry all the time and that it must be difficult for people in Africa,” Moley said. “I also learned that Key Club is great at organizing events.” Key Club raised $5,395, breaking all of its previous records. Sharpe hopes to further develop FFA by working with additional groups, such as Youth Community Service, One Dollar For Life and other schools. “I’d love to see the awareness about this project stay in each student’s consciousness all year,” she said.