SVA is finishing up their sock drive in the coming weeks

By Boots Giblin, Staff Writer

Published Mar 6, 2024

Soldier holds his new shipment of socks. (Photo courtesy of: soldiersangels.org)

The Student Veterans Alliance is amid its Sock Drive for troops overseas for the Warm Feet for Warriors project which began Feb. 1. The SVA competes with other chapters across North Texas to gather the most sock donations from Feb. 1 to March 28. The group asks for newly bought socks in their original package to be donated. Those who choose to donate can drop off socks at the Veterans Resource Center in Jarvis Hall. The SVA is a campus organization that works to help veterans and military-connected students transition from military life to college life. “The SVA is a group that wraps themselves around veterans as they come into school and say hey, this is your community, because as you can imagine as a traditional student you have different experiences from someone who spent multiple years in the military,” Brandy Merrell, a junior actuarial science major and the president of SVA, said. Merrell emphasized the importance of having clean and comfortable socks while serving.

Advertisement for the Sock Drive. (what2do@tcu)

“When you’re on active duty, your feet are everything. You’re walking, running and marching, and if you don’t take care of your feet, you can’t do your job,” Merrell said Merrell stressed how the sock drive not only helps those fighting overseas but also creates exposure for SVA and its mission. “We can push collecting socks because that is ethical and responsible leadership and its philanthropy and the school is huge on that, so it’s a good way to push in and get visibility for SVA,” Merrell said. The SVA originally set out to win the competition among the North Texas chapters, but their goals have since shifted. “We had this goal that we were gonna beat other chapters, but at this point, it’s that we want this to be an annual thing so we set an internal goal that we’re gonna get 200 pairs of socks, which is kind of low for us,” Merrell said. Merrell said there would be a reward for whichever group or organization on campus donated the most pairs of socks.