By Angela Rose
Scraping ABC gum off the bottom of a dining room table could be a punishment, but for 100 high school students it was a pleasure.
High school students from across the nation gave service to BYU?s Wilkinson Student Center Wednesday as part of Summer of Academic Refinement, a weeklong camp more commonly known as SOAR.
?BYU usually does service for everyone else,? said Lucky Fonoimoana, a counselor and Fiesta Coodinator for Multicultural Student Services. ?We forget we have needs too.?
About 100 students were divided into nine different projects around the WSC. Students cleaned elevators, wiped down walls, scraped gum from underneath tables and scrubbed tiles. The custodians said the work would have taken them two months to do on their own.
?We definitely appreciated it,? said Terry Palmer, Wilkinson Building Custodial Supervisor. ?It was stuff that was extras, if we hadn?t had the extra help we wouldn?t have been able to do it. We?ve never had that kind of help before.?
The SOAR purpose for service is to develop love among students working together and to enhance the spirit of compassion in serving those in need.
?This gives teenagers something good to do,? Fonoimoana said. ?They help people in need who couldn?t do it on their own. It makes them better people through that experience.?
Students said they really enjoyed the service.
?BYU has such a pretty campus and you want to keep it clean, so I really felt like we were helping the school,? said Melissa Rehon, a 16-year-old from Rhode Island participating in SOAR.
The camp, put on and run by BYU?s Multicultural Student Services had planned to give service working on low-income housing, but when the weather did not cooperate, they called a custodial supervisor at the WSC.
?When I called, I told them we have 100 kids, two hours of service, and these students are ready to work,? Fonoimoana said. ?Within 20 minutes they had 12 projects ready for us.?
Fonoimoana said the students were laughing and smiling, even when they were a little grossed out with the gum. He estimated the service saved BYU around $2,000.
During the past two years, SOAR has worked to improve low-income housing with Neighborhood Housing Services and has cleaned brush in the mountains to minimize forest fires. The service project is just one of the many activities at SOAR. The students have activities to help them socially, spiritually and academically. Fonoimoana said the service project and all the other activities help break down barriers between different ethnicities.
?People don?t realize the work that goes into these things,? Fonoimoana said. ?They just see the end result and say ?wow that looks good.??