{"id":20097,"date":"2015-03-28T08:00:07","date_gmt":"2015-03-28T13:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=20097"},"modified":"2015-03-28T02:42:38","modified_gmt":"2015-03-28T07:42:38","slug":"apsu-students-give-back-with-big-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2015\/03\/28\/apsu-students-give-back-with-big-event\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU students give back with “Big Event”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – A bright red wave swept across Clarksville last Saturday, March 21st, wiping away debris and litter, and leaving a grateful community in its wake.<\/p>\n

That wave consisted of about 500 Austin Peay State University students participating in The Big Event\u2014a day of service that allows students to express their gratitude to the community that supports their University.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oaq0xjM4ydc<\/a>\u201cI think our students really want to give back, and those that participated had really awesome experiences,\u201d Zac Gillman, APSU Student Government Association president, said.<\/p>\n

APSU students spent the day planting flowers at local schools, picking up litter and debris, volunteering in animal shelters, packing food boxes for the homeless and helping out dozens of other local agencies across Clarksville.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were the first group to go into Dunbar Cave in six years,\u201d Gillman said. \u201cWe dug out mud, and now the cave is going to be open to the public in May. That\u2019s 100 percent because of our group.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay students give back to the community for The Big Event on Saturday, March 21, 2015. (Taylor Slifko, APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Big Event is a national service event that started at Texas A&M in 1982 as a way of saying thanks to the residents of Bryan-College Station, Texas. More than 75 Big Events now occur at colleges and universities around the world. Gillman brought the event to APSU this year, and he hopes it will become an annual event for the campus community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have G.H.O.S.T. and Mudbowl in the fall, but we don\u2019t do anything in the spring as far as SGA is concerned, except elections,\u201d Gillman said. \u201cWe don\u2019t really have a big signature, traditional event, so that was my main priority as SGA president.\u201d<\/p>\n

A planning committee was organized earlier this year, and members hoped students would be interested in spending a day doing service work. Three days after the project was announced, more than 300 people had signed up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turned out really good,\u201d Gillman said. \u201cOur goal was 500 students this year and we met that. It was crazy, a really good atmosphere with awesome energy. Our goal for next year will be 750 students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – A bright red wave swept across Clarksville last Saturday, March 21st, wiping away debris and litter, and leaving a grateful community in its wake. That wave consisted of about 500 Austin Peay State University students participating in The Big Event\u2014a day of service that allows students to express their gratitude to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,10697,262,825,168,11399,25409,25408,25407,18753],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-5e9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20097"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20098,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20097\/revisions\/20098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}