The winter holiday season is a time for making wishes: for cheer, family togetherness, and maybe a material item or two. This year, Bonney Lake High School’s Associated Student Body is going to try and make as many of those wishes as possible a reality.

Panther ASB is organizing its first ever Winter Wishes program, which will culminate in a weeklong bout of wish-granting from Dec. 7 to 13. In early November, students and faculty wrote down one holiday wish each, big or small. Student governors gathered the slips of paper and set themselves to the task of organizing them by possibility of fulfillment. For wishes that required material resources, they have solicited local businesses for donations.

“It’s been really fun,” said Karissa Olson, the sophomore class secretary and a Winter Wish organizer. “A lot of kids I wouldn’t nomally see get excited are getting excited about this.”

Bonney Lake’s student governors were introduced to the program concept from adviser Sheana Mouring, who participated in something similar in high school, and they learned how Washington High School in Fremont runs their own Winter Wishes, during an ASB conference this year.

Students from Washington advised their Bonney Lake counterparts to start small. To that end, ASB has set the goal for 2010 at 100 wishes granted, with intent to grant a greater number of wishes each year, Olson said.

There’s one popular wish seen so far that may not need much in material resources; a Jaryd Bartlette remembrance day, in honor of the student who died in a car accident in September. Several students would like to see nothing more than to have a fitting memorial for a peer that died too soon, Olson said.

As for the other wishes, those will depend on what donations ASB students can obtain. Applebee’s Bar & Grill was credited as an early donor to the campaign.

Regardless of the quantity of wishes granted, the student government has dedicated themselves to giving Bonney Lake High School students a quality send-off into winter break.