Awards were given to student groups, individuals and faculty members for community service in a ceremony on Monday evening in the Welles-Brown Room. Students in the Rochester community have been working very hard both on and off campus doing various kinds of community service. The Oscar-themed ceremony, run by the Community Service Network, was meant to recognize their hard work and success.
“UR is taking huge steps to being more involved in the community and I think it was a huge step for CSN to recognize those working hard in the community,” senior Julia Shmoys said.
Four different kinds of groups won awards at the ceremony – individuals, faculty, student groups and tutoring groups. The awards were Oscar-based and had names like “Best Director” or “Best Supporting Actress.”
The individuals who won awards were juniors Feisal Adan, Mary DiMatteo, Adam Machson-Carter, Stefanie Putter, Cendrine Robinson, and seniors William Fasset, Mubarek Said and Julia Shmoys.
The two faculty members who won awards were professor of history Theodore Brown and senior lecturer of anthropology Maryann McCabe.
The group recipients of awards were UR Hip-Hop, Ballet Performance Group, Afro-Expressions and Yosakoi for their work on “The Power of Dance.”
Other groups who received awards were Alpha Phi Omega, Sigma Beta Rho and the Tiernan Project.
Finally, the tutoring groups which were recognized were Circle K, Jumpstart, Cameron Community Ministries, Partners in Reading, Urban Choice Charter School, Baden Street, UR Christian Fellowship and Project Care.
“I thought it was nice for community service to get recognized,” Sigma Beta Rho secretary and sophomore Danh Le said. “What surprised me was the amount of groups on campus that are devoted to serving the community. There are so many different groups that tutor and do other stuff and I really hadn’t even heard of them.”
Sigma Beta Rho, one of the groups recognized, was awarded for their work on Halloween and National Ghandi Day of Service.
“On Halloween we brought over 100 kids from the community to UR,” Le said. “We decorated Douglass and had several activities going on there like face-painting, pizza, basketball and story telling. That was all a precursor to us taking the kids around to different rooms in Sue B. and having the residents hand out candy.”
CSN, the organizer of the awards ceremony, is another community service group on campus. However, it differs in that it is an umbrella group that connects individuals interested in doing community service with different groups and parties on campus.
“CSN seeks to raise awareness of community issues through regular events and projects throughout the year,” according to their mission statement. “The goal is to give students a context to frame their service and to help the university population to recognize the challenges faced by their own Rochester community, as well as the many positive attributes Rochester has to offer, and ultimately to foster long-term engagement and a sense of commitment.”
This event also served to raise awareness for CSN. “We were trying to get our name out to more of the groups on campus, have them realize we’re a resource,” CSN member and junior Deborah Richardson said.
According to Richardson, who planned the event, the award ceremony was a success.
“It was very successful, we had a lot of people out there it went very well, very smoothly,” Richardson said.
Shmoys agrees that CSN did a great job with the event.
“CSN is trying to do a lot of outreach, they’re really going to become an organization students are going to be hearing from,” Shmoys said.Jarrett can be reached at bjarrett@campustimes.org.
