By Amy White
The Texas Catholic
IRVING — With finals looming, many university students are tied to their studies. Some are locked away in the library with their noses in books; some are rehearsing the words of an approaching presentation or turning in lingering essays; others are savoring their last days on campus before graduation — bittersweetly noting a last class, a last assignment, a last office visit with a favorite professor.
Even in the midst of all that end-of-semester hustle and bustle, though, well over 100 students at the University of Dallas chose to momentarily step away from the many demands of academic life to serve their Irving neighbors during The Big Event: Serving Irving on May 2.
Each year, the University of Dallas hosts The Big Event, a student-led service day that takes UD students — as well as faculty, staff, and alumni of the school — into the wider Irving community to offer help with projects across the city.
“This is by far our biggest charity opportunity that we offer to our whole campus community,” said Marissa “Moey” Brown, director of student engagement at UD. “We go out into the Irving community, and we just try to do as much as possible.”
The Big Event has been an annual occurrence at the university for the last several years, first making its way to the Irving campus in 2021 through the efforts of then-student Aubrey Wieberg.
“The Big Event came about as a way to rally our students and faculty and staff and be of service to those particularly who have a hard time taking care of projects in their home,” UD President Jonathan Sanford explained. “It’s a beautiful thing our students do.”
Preparing to serve
Weeks before students hefted their shovels, rakes, and trash pickers for a day of service, the work to prepare for The Big Event was already underway.
“There’s students that have been doing site checks all week. We had to order food and T-shirts and supplies to go do the households,” Brown said. “So, there’s so many moving parts.”
The bulk of those “moving parts,” Brown added, were overseen by The Big Event’s executive team co-leaders: UD students Andrea Trujillo and Sara Cantu.
Now a senior at the university, Trujillo shared that she first participated in The Big Event as a freshman; and she did so reluctantly. After her first experience with the event, however, she was hooked.
“The first year, I went to this house” of an older neighbor, the business major recalled. “We ended up helping her put new mulch down, helped clean up her garden area; I think we mowed the grass, and some guys did the gutters as well.”
As that group of volunteers finished up their work, Trujillo recounted, the woman gifted each student a rosary to take home.
“It was one of the best experiences ever,” the student said, noting that she still has the rosary. “That’s when I realized I really like to serve a lot.”
Now a co-leader of the service day, Trujillo said she spent the weeks preceding The Big Event recruiting volunteers: sending emails, creating flyers, and manning a table on the university mall to offer personal invitations to fellow students. Cantu, for her part, spent the last few weeks contacting households and other organizations in the community to arrange household signups, site checks, and service project logistics.
“It’s time consuming,” Trujillo admitted. “It takes a lot of patience and a lot of selflessness to put aside your schoolwork and just focus on this event.”
‘These are our neighbors’
Through the efforts of the student leaders, and with the support of campus staff, this year’s event brought more than 120 university students into the city of Irving to serve over a dozen local households, many belonging to elderly or disabled members of the community — and some UD alumni too, according to Mariana Toro Yehya.
“There’s some alums who have been going through health issues, and so they can’t help around their house,” said the student activities assistant, who is also a UD alumna. “It’s just nice to have their alma mater come help them out.”
Helen James, a freshman who participated in The Big Event for the first time this year, said that her group of volunteers was tasked with assisting an elderly woman whose yard had become unruly.
“She had this vine that had kind of taken over her front yard. So, we were pulling up the vine and just weeding and gardening and stuff like that,” she said.
Although the task involved true physical labor — tearing at the vines with hands, shovels, and rakes — she said the day of service was a good “reset,” a time to step away from books and put her Catholic education into action.
“You’re not just supposed to stay in the classroom. The ultimate goal of everything you do is to serve others,” James said. “You can do that through your work and your studies, but sometimes it’s good to have a very tangible way to see, ‘Okay, I’m serving others in my community.’”
Noting the approach of final examinations, she added, “The homework gets done; the work gets done. You always have time to serve other people.”
Business major Amaris Espinoza, another first-time participant of The Big Event, was part of a contingent of students who painted, raked leaves, and repaired emerging cracks at another Irving home.
“The entire meaning of today is just serving someone else and making an impact on their lives, whether it’s big or small,” Espinoza said, adding, “This is something that we should do every day and any way we can.”
UD student Jack Snider, who volunteered at the same site, agreed.
“One thing that stood out to me was just giving back to someone out of the goodness of your heart,” he said, “not for a paycheck or money or anything, just because you want to; it’s the right thing to do.”
Besides the groups of student volunteers that undertook service projects at Irving homes, several others served local parish and school communities during the service day.
“These are our neighbors, and we owe it to them to treat them as neighbors,” said UD student body president, Porter Schmidt, a politics major at the school who has participated in The Big Event multiple years. “The real point of The Big Event is the fact that these are our literal neighbors outside of UD, and what better way to actually put into practice our faith than to serve the people living right next to us?”
Cutline for featured image: University of Dallas students participate in UD’s The Big Event service day by volunteering at Faustina Academy in Irving on May 2, where they removed weeds and trash around the school building. (MARIA OLIVAS/Special Contributor)
