Aggie Volunteers Serve More Than 2,000 Area Residents During The Big Event

Virginia Sikes, a retired social worker, takes pride in living independently in the Bryan home she purchased 19 years ago. With its bright blue front door, green walls and stained glass hanging in the windows, she proudly describes her house as like “living in a box of crayons.”

Sikes, 68, has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. She enjoys keeping up her home but said she can’t afford a housekeeper, and there are a few things she just can’t do on her own. Every year since she moved into the house, Sikes has asked for help from Texas A&M University student volunteers through the The Big Event. She says the yearly service project has allowed her to continue living life on her own terms.

“I try to do everything on my own, and when I can’t, I get help. So Big Event has been a blessing,” Sikes said on Saturday as a group of students cleaned her patio, painted her bathroom and dusted the places she can’t reach from her wheelchair, like the tops of ceiling fans and the refrigerator.

Other tasks on her annual list included cleaning out the flower beds and touching up existing paint on doorframes, gates and other hard-to-reach spots inside and outside the house.

“It’s fantastic,” Sikes said. “It’s my Christmas in spring. You can get a lot of stuff done in four hours if you’ve got enough manpower.”

Sikes is one of 2,250 Bryan-College Station residents who were helped this weekend during the annual community outreach and service initiative organized by Texas A&M students. Founded in 1982, The Big Event has grown to become the largest one-day, student-run service project in the nation, spawning similar events at other universities around the world.

This year’s Big Event was the largest since the COVID-19 pandemic, putting 16,500 volunteers to work throughout the community. Director Tara Driskill ’24 said the event continues to create unique opportunities for students to connect with residents while making a tangible difference in their lives.

“The Big Event is such a unique experience that really is the Spirit of Aggieland in motion, and gives our volunteers the opportunity to tangibly practice serving their neighbors while creating memories that they can value for many years,” Driskill, a senior psychology major at Texas A&M’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Helping introduce this year’s event was Texas A&M Football Head Coach Mike Elko, who spoke at the kickoff ceremony in Aggie Park alongside Vice President for Student Affairs Brig. Gen. Joe E. Ramirez Jr., Student Body President Andrew Applewhite and Big Event organizers. Elko said he was proud to see so many students ready and willing to help improve their community.

“If this isn’t Texas A&M, I don’t know what is,” Elko said. “To get up this morning, to take your time to be out here, to partner with this great Bryan-College Station community, to go out and do what you do today to selflessly serve this community is amazing.”

Big Event volunteers often come from A&M’s 1,300-plus student organizations, allowing members to connect with the community and build stronger bonds through service. At Sikes’ home, Aggies from the Texas A&M Wesley Foundation — a Methodist student group — were hard at work washing windows, raking leaves and chatting with curious neighborhood kids.

“We try to do this as much as we can. We feel it’s an important part of our ministry,” said Justin Burnup ’24, a mechanical engineering major. “Big Event does a great job of bringing forth people that we would have otherwise not known needed help.”

Fellow volunteer Meredith Clarke ’26, also majoring in mechanical engineering, said she appreciates being part of a university that values and supports this kind of outreach: “One of my favorite things about service projects is getting to interact with the clients and hear their stories,” she said.

Sikes has more than a few stories to tell — including several about her own experience as a Texas A&M student in the late 1970s. Sikes said she was the first in her family to go to college and one of the first disabled students to graduate from the university. She earned degrees in both psychology and sociology as part of the Class of 1978.

While many campus buildings were not yet accessible, she said the administration at that time was proactive about installing ramps and other devices, partly to serve the growing community of disabled veterans coming back from the Vietnam War.

Sikes wasn’t using a wheelchair at that time, but she was prone to falls, so “the less stairs the better,” she said. Each semester, advisors would adjust the locations of her classes as needed or find other solutions, like letting her use freight elevators.

“That’s what I liked about A&M — they said, ‘Don’t worry about it, wherever your classes are, we’ll do whatever we have to,’” she said.

Decades later, Sikes said she sees that same commitment to selfless service in the students who help out around her home each spring. Even now, she said, Aggies are helping her live a happier, more independent life.

“It’s selflessness. They’re constantly giving, but they don’t expect anything in return,” she said. “That’s pretty awesome.”