It's not often that college students will get up voluntarily before 9:30 a.m., but this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, more than 200 students made an exception.
On Monday morning, students flooded Hamilton Hall to participate in the third annual Day for Service, a volunteer festival being run for the first time by student organization Carolina Rejuvenating Our Community Through Service. The event kicked off UNC's weeklong celebration of King's birthday.
The program was constructed to place students at various volunteer sites throughout the surrounding area.
The Day for Service was started by the Carolina Center for Public Service in 2001 but was handed over to the Campus Y and the Sonja H. Stone Black Cultural Center the following year. Now, with the event under the control of R.O.C.T.S., officials hoped to build off its first two years of success.
"I decided to sign up because I felt it would be a good thing to do on my day off," said Ruth Van Dyke, a freshman who volunteered at the Alterra Wynwood Retirement Home. Some students went to work in the N.C. Botanical Garden, while others volunteered at the Inter-Faith Council Community Kitchen or helped clean the grounds of Guy B. Phillips Middle School.
Another community-based volunteer group, Helping Hands, received volunteers who went to individual homes and helped families in need. "We worked with a family that had two daughters on dialysis, so basically, we were helping with housework," said junior Jadine Johnson. "You could sleep in on your day off, but it's more valuable to help people."
Mariam Tisdale, chairwoman of R.O.C.T.S., worked on countless details, including a free lunch from Jersey Mike's Subs for all volunteers, Point-2-Point shuttles to and from the various locations and two separate sessions of volunteers.
"The hardest part was probably figuring out transportation for more than 200 students," she said. "But it all worked out in the end."
Other events in this week's celebration are a candlelight vigil at South Building at 6:30 p.m. today. It will be followed by a 7:30 p.m. speech by Cornel West, a professor at Princeton University and renowned scholar on African-American studies, in Hill Hall auditorium.
