It was still dark when Julie Ziobro’s roommate and a friend got her out of bed and led her to Beaumont Tower around 6 a.m. Friday.
“I was just wondering where they were taking me, where I was being abducted to,” she said. “I was confused.”
Confused and tired - Ziobro said she went to bed around 1 a.m. Thursday night and had some choice words for her roommate when she woke up an hour earlier than expected.
“You can’t really print it,” she joked.
The zoology freshman was one of more than 60 freshmen inducted into the MSU Tower Guard at a predawn ceremony Friday. She said she had no idea what was going on until she approached the tower.
“Once I saw the people there, then I got it,” she said. “I’m really excited.”
Virginia Martz, a blindness and visual impairment specialist at MSU’s Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities, said the group does important work.
“Tower Guard is important to MSU because they provide a service to the community and to students with blindness and visual impairment,” she said.
Each member of the Tower Guard spends four hours every week recording textbooks onto audio tape for visually impaired students. Each year, 66 students are selected from the top 5 percent of the freshman class to join.
The group started in 1934, and was entirely female until 1977.
The students are not told they’ve been accepted into the group, but instead are surprised by parents and friends underneath the tower at 6:30 a.m.
A short ceremony in the Music Building auditorium followed the meeting at the tower and featured a performance by the Spartan Dischords, an all-male a cappella singing group.
Lee June, vice president of student affairs and services, attended the ceremony and said he didn’t mind the early wake-up.
“These are great students and we appreciate the services they give,” he said. “The least I could do is get up and show appreciation for what they do.”
MSU President M. McPherson said the students’ “character and willingness to provide service” make them valuable members of the organization.
“These students are outstanding men and women,” he said.
Ziobro’s parents, Tim and Sue, woke up at 3 a.m. to make the two-hour drive to East Lansing from their New Baltimore home.
Tim Ziobro said it wasn’t the first time they’ve attended a ceremony honoring their daughter - although they aren’t usually so early.
“At 6 o’clock in the morning it is,” he said. “She said she almost bit some heads off when they woke her up.”
“I think she has some apologizing to do,” her mother added.
But Sue Ziobro said her daughter’s acceptance into the organization made her proud.
“It just confirms what we’ve always thought of her,” she said. “She’s a pretty special kid.”
