About 80 students pulled out of Grand Forks on Mar. 9, set for a Spring Break marked by service rather than sleeping, performing kind acts rather than partying.
The two Grand Forks buses, nicknamed City Slickers, and Rounding up Kindness and Close Encounters of the Good and Kind, were just one component of a larger group of Midwestern students on the Pay it Forward Tour, named for the 2000 Kevin Spacey movie in which good deeds are passed from person to person.
The tour began in 2004 with 43 University of Minnesota students who spent their Spring Break performing public service projects in five cities between Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.
This year's Pay it Forward tour, sponsored by Students Today Leaders Forever, a student-run nonprofit organization, boasted 600 students on 15 buses, performing public service projects in 77 communities in the eastern half of the United States.
The two Grand Forks buses were filled mainly with UND students, but a few other students were from other nearby schools, including Bemidji State University and North Dakota State University.
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To pass time on the road, students watched movies, played games, and spent a lot of time talking and forming the kind of relationships that last year's participants said definitely don't end with Spring Break.
But the students' main focus was on helping others in cities along the way. The Rounding up Kindness bus traveled from Grand Forks to Washington, stopping along the way in Madison, Wis., Detroit, Syracuse, N.Y., Boston, and New York City.
The Close Encounters crew traveled from Grand Forks to San Antonio, stopping along the way in Rapid City, S.D., Colorado Springs, Colo., Santa Fe, N.M., Roswell, N.M., and Crane, Texas.
Marks reports on higher education. Reach him at (701) 780-1105, (800) 477-6572, ext. 105; or jmarks@gfherald.com .
