Yesterday, students and faculty participated in Student Government Associations’s “The Big Event.” “The Big Event” was actually started at Texas A&M as a way for the college to say thank you and give back to the community for their support throughout the school year. Since then, colleges and universities across the United States have started holding “The Big Event.” SGA decided to hold “The Big Event” in an effort to continue to reach out and give back to the community.
“We wanted something else to do to help give back to the community besides “The Big Creek Clean-Up,” Legislative Affairs Director junior Andrew Dempewolf said.
This year was the pilot year for Fort Hays, but it won’t be the last.
“We wanted to see what would work and what wouldn’t work. So some changes will most likely be made for next year,” Dempewolf said
Students and faculty performed services such as painting rooms in houses, doing yard work and picking up trash on campus and around Big Creek. The goal was to get entire classes involved and not just individual students.
“We wanted to make sure we had enough people to cover a job in an hour. If we had only one or two students show up then some of the projects would have taken much longer to complete,” junior Tyler Thompson said.
Several faculty members took their classes to project sites to help out with the event.
“It was a fantastic experience. Not only was it a great opportunity to help the community, but it was also a great way to connect with the students,” said Jeff Burnett, associate professor of Health and Human Performance.
SGA used the Service Learning Committee to help get ideas for places to get projects from.
“They were a huge help with giving us agencies in Hays to contact about doing projects for. We’re hoping in the future to not just do work for groups, but also for individuals who contact us as well,” Dempewolf said.
Students can look forward to this event being held again next year, with some changes and modifications from this year.
“We might move it from the spring to the fall, and there are some other things that may have to be changed. We’ll look back on it in a couple of weeks and decide what we need to do differently to make things even more successful for next year,” Dempewolf said.
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