Traditions of Texas A&M University - Service Projects

Service Projects

Texas A&M provides many opportunities for students to participate in volunteer and service activities. Students at Texas A&M originated The Big Event, the largest one-day student-run service project in the nation. The annual event began in 1983 after the Texas A&M Student Government Association passed a resolution encouraging students to show their gratitude to the community by giving of their time. From its beginnings of six individual students wanting to contribute back to the local community, The Big Event has expanded to allow over thirteen thousand students to participate in over 1400 jobs, such as raking leaves, painting houses, and trimming trees. The concept for The Big Event has spread throughout the nation, and as of 2007, 71 schools across the nation participate each year including 1 middle school, 2 high schools, and 68 universities. The 2008 Big Event attracted 10,600 students who worked a record number of 1,000 jobs.

Aggies also participate annually in Replant, a one-day environmental service. In 2006, 1,000 students participated, planting 250 trees in three public parks. The event has been an annual tradition since 1991, when the Texas A&M Environmental Issues Committee began planting trees to replace those that had been cut down for Bonfire. Although Bonfire has been officially disbanded, Replant continues. Its goals are now to beautify the Bryan-College Station area and to "creat harmony between students and the residents." In 2000, the group planted twelve live oak trees at the Texas A&M Polo Grounds in memory of the twelve victims of the 1999 Bonfire collapse. That year the group was awarded the Community Forestry Award from the Texas Forest Service. The group provides their own trees, grown at the Texas A&M Riverside campus in Bryan, Texas and has its own Student Government committee.

The Corps of Cadets annually conducts the March to the Brazos, a 14 miles (20 km) round-trip road march that serves as both a ceremony to transfer leadership as well as a fundraiser for the March of Dimes. The Corps hold various fundraisers and solicits donations throughout the year. On a Saturday morning, generally in April, each year, all members of the Corps gather at the Quadrangle, near their dormitories, and march en masse across campus and down Highway 60 to Texas A&M's Animal Science Teaching, Research & Extension Complex near the east bank of the Brazos River. There, the cadets learn who will fill each leadership position for the following year. The current seniors are allowed to ride a bus back to campus while the newly promoted cadets lead their outfits back to campus. The event is the largest and most successful student-run fundraising event in the United States for the March of Dimes. In its first 27 years, from 1977 through 2003, the event raised a combined US$1.3 million.