By Kristin Longley
Special to The State News
Laughter and rival school cheers echoed over the fields of Giving Tree Farm on Saturday as MSU and The Ohio State University students volunteered together before kick-off.
About 100 Ohio State students and 50 MSU students raked leaves for elderly Lansing residents and volunteered at Giving Tree Farm, 15433 Turner Road in Lansing. The event was organized through MSU's Into the Streets program for a late Make a Difference Day celebration, which was Oct. 23.
"Of course I want MSU to win the game, but I think it's more important that two rival schools are able to come together to work in the community," said Claire Drummond, Into the Streets chairwoman and education senior.
This is the seventh year that Ohio State has done this program, but it is MSU's first time hosting another school for Make a Difference Day, said Matt Couch, assistant director of the Ohio Union, which coordinates student programs and service opportunities.
The students broke up into two groups, with the majority raking leaves for elderly people in the Lansing area. The second group traveled to Giving Tree, which is designed to enrich the lives of people with disabilities and their families.
Susan Houghton, market garden manager for Giving Tree, said with the students' help, they were able to get three weeks worth of work done in fewer than three hours.
"This job would have taken at least 100 hours of labor, and at the $8 per hour I pay MSU interns, that's about $1,000, so this is a very big donation," Houghton said.
The students said they were happy to help out. School cheers were recited as buckets of compost were transferred from hand to hand in an assembly line fashion to the newly constructed hoop houses, which are similar to greenhouses. The line was a colorful combination of Buckeyes red and Spartans green.
And although there was speculation and good-natured teasing about the outcome of the impending football game, the volunteers worked toward their common goal.
"We may be competitive on the field, but today we are coming together in the community to do service, so we have that in common," said Tracy Stuck, Ohio Union director. "The biggest thing we have in common is that we both don't like the maize and blue."
Karen McKnight Casey, director of MSU's Service Learning Center, said college rivalries, especially in the Big Ten, are thought of as insurmountable, but Saturday's events proved that theory wrong.
"We are very pleased with the turnout from Ohio State, and that our students were willing to give up a Saturday morning for this," McKnight Casey said. "This shows that rival students are willing to transcend boundaries for the good of the community."
