[media-credit name=”The Big Event Facebook Page” align=”alignnone” width=”387″][/media-credit]

The co-directors of the Big Event are hoping this year’s community service day will be Quinnipiac’s biggest yet.

The Big Event is a nationwide, one-day, student-run community service project. The event is one of the largest in the country, according to the Quinnipiac University Big Event webpage.

The Big Event started 28 years ago at Texas A&M University with the purpose to present students with the opportunity to say “thank you” to the surrounding community, as explained by the Big Event DoYouQU webpage.

Registration for the event started Monday, Feb. 15. As of Friday, Feb. 19, 45 teams have signed up, according to senior Gianna Costantino, one of the directors of the Big Event.

Sophomore Amy Lafleur will be participating in the Big Event for the first time on a team with her sorority.

“I heard it was a great experience to do something with the school as a whole,” Lafleur said. “Even though we all have individual teams we all come together for the day which is really fun.”

Registration is open for four weeks leading up to spring break but has also been extended through spring break in the past, according to senior co-director Thomas Frotton.

“Right now it’s two weeks of just team captains who will register their whole team, and then individual participants can start registering themselves on the Monday [Feb. 29],” he said.

Last year 1,200 undergraduate, graduate, alumni and faculty signed up for the Big Event, Costantino said. But the Big Event committee is looking for more this year.

“We’re aiming for 1,500 [volunteers],” Frotton said. “I want 2,000 but that’s a stretch.”

According to Costantino, two years ago the event had its biggest turnout ever when 1,600 members of the Quinnipiac community participated.

“Then we kind of took a drop, but we are hoping to have our biggest year ever this year,” she said.

Senior Micaela Sturm participated in the Big Event her freshman year and was placed at the Sleeping Giant.

Sturm enjoyed the experience and is looking forward to this year’s Big Event.

“I’m definitely going to participate,” she said. “I hope that I get to go somewhere fun, anywhere would be great to go but it would be fun to go somewhere that would pertain to what I like to do and my interests as far as community service.”

Sturm said she was unable to participate in the event last year because she studied abroad for the semester, but encourages others to participate every semester they have at Quinnipiac.

“I would absolutely [encourage others to sign up]. It was a fun time and it was great to help out Hamden and the community surrounding Quinnipiac,” Sturm said.

Costantino said the Big Event committee works diligently toward the promotion of the big day.

“A year’s worth of work goes into planning this event. We start as soon as school starts. We recruit our e-board in the very first month and then we meet every week in the semester from then on,” Costantino said.

The committee will hold a dinner on Feb. 24 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the upper cafe for students to register there, Frotton said. There will also be registration opportunities on the North Haven campus to encourage graduate students to sign up, he said.

Costantino said the committee also works toward promoting directly to freshmen because they may know less about the event than other members of the Quinnipiac community. The group presents to FYS (First-Year Seminar) classes, reaches out to clubs and organizations and plans to conduct a “dorm storm” on Saturday, Feb. 27.

“We go to all of the freshman and sophomore dorms, knock on their doors and tell them about the Big Event and how to register,” Costantino said.

Sophomore Kelsey McDonough did not participate in the Big Event her freshman year but plans on joining the Athletic Training Club’s team this year.

“The Big Event means helping out the community around us,” McDonough said. “Sometimes when you’re in college I feel like you’re just stuck in this bubble on campus and you don’t really know what’s going on in the outside world.”

To sign up for the Big Event log into Do You QU and type in Quinnipiac University’s Big Event. Click on the forms tab to fill out an application to become a team captain. The team captain will be able to sign up the entire group. Each volunteer will then get a separate form to fill out. The captain is responsible for attending a meeting a week before the event and checking in their team the day of.