Cassandra Milnes
Connector Staff
Students, faculty and alumni will be at the University Crossing Lobby for a few hours of community service to help the community during Homecoming weekend.
The event, which will take place on Oct. 19 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. is one of the last events during Homecoming weekend. It is also one of the events that is beneficial to the community. A few of the organizations this day will benefit are UTEC, House of Hope, the Lowell Wish Project and the Central Food Ministry. Each of these organizations are located nearby.
It also helps UMass Lowell and its students to keep a “close relationship with Lowell,” said Director of Student Affairs Shaima Ragab. This close relationship allows UMass Lowell to properly function as it sends classes on trips, students on co-op and makes the students and faculty feel safer within the community. The connections from this relationship help UMass Lowell students get internships, co-ops, jobs and general connections necessary to survive in the workforce.
Students who wish to participate in the event need to RSVP so the school can provide bussing for the students. The school also requires each student to fill out a liability waiver ahead of time. Students can find the link to RSVP on the university’s Homecoming webpage.
It takes a lot to set up for community service day, but it is done through the collaboration of multiple UMass Lowell organizations such as: The Office of Student Affairs, the Office of Advancement and UMass Lowell’s chapter of Omicron Delta Kappa (ODK), a national honors society made up of juniors and seniors dedicated to academic excellence, personal leadership and community service.
These organizations have run a community service day every fall and spring semester for about a decade. The average student and alum outcome is about 60 people, but UMass Lowell students could be doing so much better. There are thousands of students, let alone alumni, that could be attending these events.
This day benefits many different organizations, making it easy to find one that suits any students’ personal interests. The event can also be used to help students fill their community service requirements for any organizations that they are a part of, such as Greek Life and any national honors society. For students in the Honors College it would also count as their enrichment requirement (E1) for the semester.
There are so many great reasons to go to community service day. Hopefully lots of River Hawks will make room to spend three hours of their weekend helping their community out.
