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Freshmen Orientation gets down and dirty

Darin Glass Editor-in-chief

It's the first week of school. Freshmen students have been taken from their homes, bombarded with information and herded like cattle through a week long series of lectures and meetings.

And last Tuesday afternoon, about 20 were loaded on vans to the outskirts of Watauga County to work in the hot sun planting trees and tilling ground for mulch all day.

Freshmen Orientation is tough, but since when did Freshmen Orientation include slave labor?

For those 20 freshmen, back breaking work was a part of their first week at Appalachian as they dug in and volunteered to help out the community at Cove Creek Elementary School.

Stan Steury, a volunteer with the Parent Teacher Student Organization (PTSO) at Cove Creek said, "Usually we have three or four volunteers show up, but today we've got 20 . . . It's great to have people come help us out."

Cove Creek was one of many sights where about 80 freshmen volunteered to work. The event was co-sponsored by the Interfraternity Council and the Panhellenic Council.

Students also volunteered at other charitable organizations like the Humane Society, Habitat for Humanity and the American Red Cross.

Chancellor Francis T. Borkowski was also on hand to throw some dirt around as the volunteers planted trees and improved the landscape around Cove Creek.

"I came to help because the students came," Borkowski said. "It seemed like a good project to be a part of."

All of the landscaping work done at the school are performed by volunteers. The county's budget is not large enough to incorporate work which is not essential for the school to function.

This event was not a new phenomenon for Appalachian. Appalachian and the Community Together (ACT) has been working for several years to help get students involved with helping the community.

For the 80 freshmen who volunteered their free time on the first week of school, the volunteer service project set a precedent for their academic career at Appalachian. It will go further than just to establish their futures as it will to invest in it.

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