In 1994, Congress designated Martin Luther King Jr. day a national day of service, the only such day on the American calendar. According to King, “”Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?'” In the spirit of this fundamental question, people around the country made the day of service “a day on, not a day off” and worked together to do good. Colgate was no exception. Over 150 Colgate students, including myself, signed up to participate in the Martin Luther King Jr. afternoon of service following classes on Friday, January 24. Organized through the COVE, we represented the largest Colgate group to participate in the event in recent years.The signature Colgate vans arrived at 12 local organizations in the region including Johnson Park Center, Chenango Canal Association, Madison Lane Apartments, and the Hamilton Center for the Arts. The various sites ranged from nursing homes and hospitals to environmental groups and art galleries.
I was at the Earlville Opera House, an 1890 theater that continues to host a full slate of performances every summer. The opera house also contains art galleries, so my duty, along with three fellow Colgate students, was to help clean and prepare one of the galleries for an upcoming art show for local elementary students. The director was extremely grateful since the work would have taken her much longer and she certainly wouldn’t have been able to move tables and chairs up and down the steps on her own. In just a few hours, the four of us were able to empty out and clean the gallery. We even had some time to explore the theater.
I was extremely surprised when I saw the historic opera house. After a short stint as a basketball court, it was restored to its former glory as a theater that, like many theaters of its time, was built with almost-perfect acoustics. If it weren’t for the MLK day of service, I would have never discovered this impressive location, just ten minutes down the road from Colgate. It even has ties to Colgate’s history. In the 1970s the opera house was slated to be turned in to a parking lot, but a Colgate student living off campus in Earlville fell in love with the opera house, bought it and saved it.
While the director of the Earlville Opera House certainly received a lot of help from us, we definitely got a lot out of the experience, and I’m sure the same can be said for Colgate students volunteering at other sites. We were all able to make a difference and explore parts of Central New York we may have never experienced before.
– Jared Goldsmith ’16