By Lee Reinsch
Correspondent
DE PERE – While one group of St. Norbert College students assembles art materials for patients at Bellin Health Cancer Center so they can create while undergoing treatment, another group lops off buckthorn at Baird Creek and hauls the prickly branches away.
It’s the 16th Annual St. Norbert College Into the Streets, whereby incoming and first-year students – including foreign-semester students, transfer students and freshmen – take their youthful enthusiasm and boundless energy off-campus.
More than 500 first-year students spent Friday, Aug. 23 doing odd-jobs and chores for more than 40 nonprofits around the area.
Projects ranged from sorting donations at Manna For Life thrift store to backfilling a new driveway with dirt at the Ecumenical Partnership for Housing.
“It kicks off their school year, and it also helps them to learn about Brown County and the community they’re living in,” said Jessica Horton, assistant director of Leadership Development and First Year Experience at St. Norbert College.
Downtown, at the YWCA of Greater Green Bay, students got donated merchandise ready for a clothing sale. Over at the YMCA, they got costumes ready and dug out decorations for the Y’s Halloween party.
“It’s good for us to have our faces out there and show the community that we care about each other and that we’re here for each other,” said St. Norbert student Clare Kelly, as she collated sheets of information into welcome packets for students at Aldo Leopold Community School.
Kelly, a junior sociology major from Chicago, served as an on-site coordinator at that location, overseeing the student volunteers there for Into the Streets.
In the room with Kelly were Amber Storey, Janesville, who plans to major in biology, and Taylor Huber, Pulaski, who plans to major in nursing.
“Our big thing at St. Norbert College is called communio,” Kelly said.
The word translates from Latin as fellowship or mutual participation.
“It’s our whole idea of working together and being a team – working as one for the same mission,” Kelly said.
St. Norbert emphasizes service to others as one of its core tenets.
Holly Baseman, executive director of Baird Creek Preservation Foundation, said the work the St. Norbert College students did to reduce the amount of buckthorn at Baird Creek was invaluable.
“They were sawing branches all afternoon, applying a solution to keep buckthorn from growing back, and hauling all of the branches and brush away,” Baseman said. “We’re a big place, and there was a lot of buckthorn.”
Buckthorn is a non-native invasive plant whose roots remain close to the surface and steal nutrients from other plants.
It spreads easily, can cause soil erosion, and serves as a magnet for fungi, diseases and pests.
In addition to all of the elbow grease the St. Norbert students provided around the area, they also unloaded a semi containing some 21 tons of potatoes, which they sorted into smaller quantities.
Food pantries from around the area can pick up the potatoes from Paul’s Pantry.
It’s the eighth year Into the Streets has included the Potato Drop.