Longwood’s largest community service project ‘The Big Event’ was most likely originally titled for the amount of people who participate, or it’s impact on the community.
Year after year the event has sustained success—a decent portion of university students participate and try to make an impact. But according to the events director, Kirsten Gaines, amounts of students deciding not to show up the day of have always been a problem.
Gaines said for this past Saturday’s event, “70 or 80” people, almost 1/5 of the total number signed up, chose to no-show after previously saying they’d participate.
“We had almost 400 sign up this year, and just over 300 that showed up,” said Gaines. “It happens every year. We are a social campus but I feel like if we did a better job of putting faces to names before students show up on the day of, they will know who they’re disappointing.”
Gaines said there were multiple job sites that didn’t get served because of a lack of people.
“We did get to over 80 job sites though, which is good,” she said.
Gaines also mentioned there were groups who filled in at multiple job sites to make sure certain jobs got done. She labeled the event a “success” and said it did well despite the non-attenders.
“I don’t want to mar the whole day because I was very happy with the people that did show up, I felt really glad they were there,” she added. “Every Farmville resident I talked to said ‘you don’t understand how amazing this event is…I’m 85, my husband just got cancer. Or, I just broke my ankle’…etc. People like the help they are getting…they love it.”
Accord to Gaines, The Big Event is about a “relationship” with Farmville and important to the community for a variety of reasons. Not just the service aspect, but to make a connection.
“It is the first step in the reparation process with this community,” Gaines said.
“Every year it’s getting bigger, but it can kind of be a tenuous relationship between students and ‘townies’ which is the language we are trying to eradicate.”
“If they see students coming out and making a positive impact, students smiling, students raking their yard… people care,” she added after a sharp pause. “They want students to prove themselves. Students that don’t show up are proving the negative stereotype about college students in a college town.”
There were some reports of students who claimed they couldn’t show up due to bad weather, but Gaines doesn’t buy it.
“That’s a cop out,” she proclaimed. “It was probably the best weather we have had in a while. Most of it is a result of people going out too hard the night before, or just brushing it off.”
Gaines said going forward, The Big Event’s executive council will try to market the day to students differently—more immensely than in the past.
“There needs to be someway we pitch it to students, rather than just a good way to get hours,” said Gaines. “We’ve been working with our expansion committee to try to get across the importance of the community with the event.”
