By: Ally Vincent, Staff Writer
Have you ever thought about why we have Community Service Day or what it really is about? Community service has been a huge part of the SLU campus from the very beginning. When SLU first opened as a college in 1898, community service was required once a week by the students. As the student population grew and different priorities came about, community service changed to once a semester on a particular day. This occurred on a random Saturday each Fall and Spring semester, which meant students had to wake up early to serve the community at 8:00 in the morning. Many of the students loathed this, but they did it because it was required for certain classes or organizations. Ten years ago, a group of students taking a leadership class thought there was not enough participation on community service day, so they approached Paige Ramsey-Hamacher, the chair of the community service day program for the last ten years. They proposed the idea of changing community service day to the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, and the student population agreed this would be a better idea.
Paige said, “They [the students]felt it made sense to honor the legacy of Dr. King with services on his holiday.”
The students also felt they would get more participation from faculty and staff if they held it on a holiday instead of a weekend. Paige sent the request to President’s staff, and Community Service Day has been on Martin Luther King Day since the Spring of 2008.
Paige further explains that “ Dr. King talked often about serving others in his sermons and his message to people. Because he wanted each of us to love one another and to take care of our community, we thought it was fitting to honor him with a day on, not a day off.”
Senior, Maryerie Rojas remembers when Community Service Day was on a Saturday at 8:00A.M.. At this time, students were shuttled off to different locations around the community to volunteer. Some students went to nursing homes, farms and a variety of other places to help different organizations. Other students stayed on campus and had to do a variety of different services.
Maryerie and her group had to pick moss from trees using a moss picker. Maryerie says, “I enjoy having community service day on a weekday holiday because it’s easier to coordinate with class and work. On Saturdays it is difficult to get out of work for college students.”
The school also started to use Veteran’s Day as a way to honor that holiday and serve the community instead of using a Saturday. They decided to make it a day of community service and no classes. An issue they ran into when changing it to the holidays was that not all agencies were able to host volunteers because it was a holiday, so they changed it to an on campus event. They started having Feeding Children Everywhere in the Fall of 2012 where the SLU community gathered to pack meals to send around the world to hungry children. This turned out to be a huge success. The president’s staff then contacted the community service day committee, requesting to do another Feeding Children Everywhere event (packaging more meals than the previous year) in the Fall of 2013 and to do a Children’s Fair on Martin Luther King, Jr. day in 2014 for the children and families in the local community. In the Fall of 2013, the Saint Leo Community packed over 250,000 bags that were being sent to Africa. This year, on Martin Luther King, Jr. day, there was a Children’s Fair in the Bowl in which children from all over the community including: Boys and Girls Club, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Farm Workers Self-Help came to the campus. Different organizations from the campus and community provided a variety of activities. These activities included: bounce houses, bead making, coloring, and even making your own caramel apples.
Paige says, “We are always open to suggestions from our students, staff and faculty because this is a community event so it wouldn’t come together without the help and support of the entire Saint Leo community.”
One can contact her at paige.ramsey.hamacher@saintleo.edu or Rhondda Waddell at rhondda.waddell@saintleo.edu.
