RSVP celebrates 10 years of community service
The Rice Student Volunteer Program celebrated its 10th anniversary with three different activities last week. The celebration began with a formal ceremony in the Grand Hall on March 12, continued with a TG on March 15 and ended with over 450 people volunteering in the Houston community during the Spring Outreach Day on March 16.
The formal ceremony incorporated a look at the past, present and future of RSVP. Outgoing RSVP Chair Meg Grulee performed the master of ceremonies duties, RSVP founder Scott Biddy spoke about its very first year and RSVP advisor Heather Syrett talked about the future.
Grulee used a Walt Disney philosophy to describe her feelings about RSVP in the opening comments. She described the four "C's" of RSVP as curiosity, courage, confidence and constancy. She gave an example of how RSVP was achieving each of the four goals. Volunteers through RSVP were courageous "by giving not only your hands but your hearts." The 10th anniversary served as the example of constancy.
In his comments on the founding of RSVP, Biddy admitted that "the idea for RSVP was born out of boredom," mainly from his summer job with the Department of Energy in a nuclear weapons plant. While Biddy's achievement may have been facilitated by boredom, Biddy later reflected on what defined his senior year and made the founding of RSVP an important part of his last year at Rice.
"So, during that August in 1985, I came to the realization that for all the value of my classroom experiences and college life at Rice, in many respects the thing that had most enriched my life, that had done the most to make me more mature, more thoughtful and more compassionate, the thing that had essentially become the foundation of my education was volunteer service," Biddy said.
Biddy went on to further describe the various levels of support he and his fellow founders received from parties within the university as well as the internal debates that the founders had on the validity of their motives. In the end, Biddy summed up his feelings on RSVP by saying that "a group of Rice students ... made a real difference around here."
Immediately following Biddy's look at the past, Syrett talked briefly about the direction of RSVP in the future.
"[The officers] are working to really become an independent student organization, working at the caliber of the other blanket tax organizations like the RPC and the SA," Syrett said. She went on to say that they want RSVP to be more of a "service programming organization, offering a variety of service opportunities outside of Outreach Day."
An awards ceremony followed Syrett's comments. Grulee and incoming RSVP Chair Teddy Kapur handed out the awards in recognition of volunteer service to 28 students. Twenty-six undergraduates and two graduate students were honored for their services as RSVP chairs, World Hunger Day coordinators, bilingual tutors, volunteers in the Texas Medical Center and organizers of volunteer trips and services on campus.
ADVANCE, the Vietnamese Student Association, the Catholic Student Association, the Premedical Society, the Mexican-American Engineering Society and the Student Association were also recognized for their service as organizations.
Vice President for Student Affairs Zenaido Camacho delivered the closing comments with a short poem by Tagore.
"I slept/And dreamt that life was all joy. I awoke/And saw that life was but service. I served/And understood that service was joy." Camacho then equated the people in the room to "starfish throwers," those people who give dying starfish on the beach another chance by throwing them back into the ocean, even if the chances of survival are small.
"If we're not here to help others, what are we here to do?" he said.
The formal ceremony was just the first part of the celebration. The two-hour TG in the Ray Courtyard of the Student Center featured music, T-shirts, free drinks and free food. The supplies for the TG were donated by six on-campus sponsors and 10 off-campus sponsors from Coca-Cola to Kirby Grill.
"We had a great turnout at the TG, and it really spread the word about the 10th anniversary," Syrett said.
The event was followed the next day by Spring Outreach Day, the 16th Outreach Day in RSVP's history. The event was coordinated by Gregg Miller, Manisha Gandhi, Heather Griffin and Catherine Gordon. An estimated 450 students, faculty, staff and alumni volunteered for 32 shifts at 24 locations, ranging from the Covenant House to the Center for the Retarded. Alumni Outreach Days were also carried out in Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco.
"Outreach Day gives participants a sense of the needs of the Houston community during their time at Rice and how they can help address those needs," Syrett said. "We hope to provide a lasting impression on all of the participants that will encourage concern and continued service by showing them how many service organizations need help and by letting them sample volunteer work on Outreach Day."
While the week of festivities was a celebration of the past 10 years of RSVP, it also served as the beginning of the next phase of RSVP's existence.
Kapur has already solicited comments on the direction of RSVP through the SA listserv. He wrote that the "new officers have many fresh ideas, but as we start to plan for the future, I wanted the input from all of you."
While collecting student input, Kapur and his staff will be trying to implement better publicity, more frequent opportunities for service and transportation to the service sites on the weekends -- just the start of many changes to come as RSVP looks toward their 20th anniversary.
Recognized by RSVP for service: Leticia Beltran, Paul Boyer, Cecilia Tran, Christine Garcia, Liana Gefter, Meg Grulee, Patricia Hampton, Curtis Huynh, Ryan Impelman, Gina Jae, Vinni Juneja, Kimberly Kho, Jennie Leslie, Emily Liu, Matthew Mendenhall, Gregg Miller, Dan Newman, Marielba Rojas, David Sissman, Julie Song, Hai Tien, Jasmin Tiro, John Tustin, Chelsea Valdes, Emily Velz, Kathy Wang, Jessica Williams and Estella Zarate.
This item appeared in the News section of the March 22, 1996 issue.
Copyright © 1996 The Rice Thresher. All Rights
Reserved.
This document may be distributed
electronically, provided that it is distributed in its entirety
and includes this notice. However, it cannot be reprinted
without the express written permission of:
The Rice
Thresher, Rice University, 6100 Main, Houston, TX 77005-1892, USA.
The Thresher Online Project -- ethresh@rice.edu