Some new students get a head start through community service

Lee Wells, a Loaves and Fishes board member and chef, helps Nate Oaks-Lee '04 prepare a meal for needy residents at the soup kitchen at St. John's Episcopal Church in downtown Ithaca, Aug. 20. Oaks-Lee is a POST program team leader. Charles Harrington/University Photography

By Mark Rader

Last week, 76 incoming Cornell freshmen and transfer students participated in a pre-orientation community service program in the Ithaca area. Coordinated by Cornell's Public Service Center and Cornell Tradition, Pre-Orientation Service Trips (POST) provided these new students the opportunity to live in and learn about the Ithaca community and make friends through hands-on community service projects and evening activities.

The mission of the POST is threefold, said Renee Farkas, assistant director of county programs at the Public Service Center and coordinator of POST. "We want to give kids the opportunity to do community service, give them a head start on making friends, and get them acquainted not only with the Cornell community but the Ithaca community." Students learned about the POST program through a brochure included in their orientation materials and were also directed to the POST program web site. This year the response was the best it has been in the program's six year history. "We had nearly double the students we had last year," Farkas said. "Twenty-one states and seven countries are represented."

The program, which began Sunday, Aug. 19, and ended Thursday, Aug. 23, consisted of both hard work and time for participants to get acquainted with each other and the Ithaca community. Accompanied by their team leaders (all Cornell students, most of them alumni of the POST program), participants volunteered at 15 local organizations and agencies.

At Loaves and Fishes, a food bank in downtown Ithaca, participants unloaded boxes of donated food and salvaged peaches donated by Wegman's grocery stores. At the Ellis Hollow Nature Preserve and the Lindsay-Parsons Biodiversity Preserve, participants cleared trails with weed whackers, built a bridge over a creek and hauled two rusting cars off the preserve with the help of a tractor. Over a two-day period, participants working for the Senior Citizen's Council stripped and repainted a farmhouse owned by a 90-year-old Newfield resident.

Betsy Darlington, director of land protection at Finger Lakes Land Trust, said of the two groups of volunteers that helped out at Ellis Hollow Nature Preserve and the Lindsay-Parsons Biodiversity Preserve: "They were fabulous, hard-working, friendly kids. They worked their hearts out. It's nice to have a big group come in because you can tackle projects you wouldn't normally tackle all at once."

Top: From left, POST freshmen Jennifer Leary, Lindsay Morse and Karen Luby hang posters on the Ithaca Commons for Offender Aid and Restoration's Books thru Bars of Ithaca program, started by a Cornell grad, which donates books to New York state prison inmates. Bottom: From left, POST freshmen John Falzone, Dante Simone and Kelly Cosmen, haul buckets for watering saplings in Ithaca's Iacovelli Park. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

"It's a lot of physical labor," said Laurie Brown, one of 14 POST team leaders. "The kids get tired out, but it's a good tired out."

In the evenings, students participated in scheduled social activities: a barbecue on the Ithaca Commons, a dance party at Republica nightclub and a scavenger hunt that ended up at Purity Ice Cream. On Thursday, the final day of the program, participants picnicked and performed skits at Taughannock Falls State Park.

The home base for the team leaders and participants throughout the week was Boynton Middle School, located within walking distance of most of the work sites. Students slept on wrestling mats in the cafeteria, ate huge meals prepared in the school kitchen and used the gym for recreation. Cindy Quan, from Plainview, N.Y., described the experience this way: "It's like a really huge slumber party." Added Andrew March, an aerospace engineering major from Westboro, Mass., "You get no sleep."

The reasons students gave for signing up for the POST program were varied; some wanted to get a head start on meeting people, some wanted to get to know Ithaca. But all of them were motivated by their interest in community service.

"I did a lot of community service in high school, and I knew I wanted to continue it," said Lauren Merkley, a Chicago native. Jeffrey Knight of St. Petersburg, Fla., has volunteered for Habitat for Humanity in the past. "I like the construction, the building. It's fun."

Added Peter Dalope, of Syracuse: "Every time I've done a service project, it's felt good."

On Friday POST participants moved out of Boynton Middle School and began the orientation process with the rest of the new students enrolled at Cornell. But they probably won't soon forget their five-day POST experience.

As Cindy Quan put it: "It was a really strenuous, hard week, but I loved every moment of it."

Added Andrew March: "We're all friends now."