It seems that new Uni events are created every year, and it is no different this time around. The Senior Volunteer Day and end-of-the-year Subbie Retreat are the newest events to show up this year. 

With the previous school year of online learning, many Uni events had to be canceled or carefully rescheduled in order to follow Covid guidelines. This influenced many alternative events that were shorter and for smaller groups of people. One of these events happened to be the subbie retreat. The end-of-the-year subbie retreat is mainly run by the seniors, Aakash Vasireddy, Andrew Lin, and Sally Ma. It is an event that is run near the start of the school year. Yet with Covid restrictions, the subbie retreat had to be rescheduled to later in the school year which put forward an idea for the seniors. The seniors especially liked the idea of an end-of-the-year retreat because with the timing being at the end of the year, the subbies know their classmates much better compared to the beginning of the year. Andrew Lin mentions that they hope this new subbie retreat leads them to having even more fun, as they will be more familiar with each other than they would be from the start of the year. The end-of-the-year subbie retreat brings back some features of the old retreat such as capture the flag, drip drip drop, tug-of-war, etc. They also have some new activities planned for the subbies this year, but they are still in the middle of organizing the rest of the event. It sounds like the sub-freshman class will be having an exciting and entertaining retreat to end their school year off.

The senior volunteer day, run by Dr. Radnitzer, will be helping out organizations such as Sustainable Student Farm at UIUC, Randolph Street Community Garden, Clarks Lindsey Retirement Home, and Brooker T. Washington School. Here is a breakdown of what our seniors will be doing for each of these organizations. At Sustainable Student Farm, volunteers will be planting spring vegetable crops, cleaning up the Strawberry Bed, mulching asparagus, and maybe laying mulch. At the community garden, volunteers will be preparing beds for planting by filling them with dirt, laying hose, building plant supports, and finally planting. At the retirement home, students will offer engaging activities with the residents such as pushing them in their wheelchair outdoors in the courtyard, playing card games in a small group, offering fingernail painting, reading to a resident, singing with them, and/or doing puzzles with them. At Brooker Washington School, volunteers will be tutoring and playing games with the kindergarteners and second graders. Dr. Radnitzer believes that it’s nice for kids to go out into nature and learn about the community by doing volunteer work. It should be a great learning experience for the seniors to go out and learn how important our community truly is.