Earth Day, KT WeekEND and KT Week: what to expect
This year, Earth Day falls on Sunday, April 22, and it will bring many outdoor activities both on campus and in numerous communities in the nation. Earth Day brings people together in order to both celebrate the resources we have and work to better the world in which we live. This year, Maryville College students and alumni will be given many chances do just that.
Kin Takahashi weekend, or KT WeekEND, is an event that is hosted at Maryville College on Saturday, April 21. Alumni and current students come together on this weekend in order to work on outdoor projects and help fix things around the campus. They participate in activities such as cleaning the memorial garden, clearing paths in the college woods, building tables, picking weeds and planting flowers.
The work is all done on a volunteer basis (however registration forms were due by April 9 in order to receive a shirt) and will go from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is recommended that volunteers bring small snacks such as granola bars and fruit and a refillable water bottle to fill throughout the day in order to cut down on plastic waste.
After the work is completed, there will be a celebration with a sustainable meal provided at Crawford House. The Alpine Tower will also be open from 1-4 p.m. as well as a Maker’s Market in the MacArthur Pavilion.
Along with this weekend event celebrating Earth Day, there is week-long event for alumni hosted in June called KT Week.
This week is full of many activities that are similar to KT WeekEND with a few larger tasks that can be completed with the extra time. The volunteers live in the dorms for a week in order to complete all of this work and have some special activities planned out for them during their time. There have also been many generous donations from alumni and friends of the community in order to cover the costs of the materials needed.
Both of these events are named after Kin Takahashi, an alumnus from 1888, who had a tremendous impact on the college. In his time at Maryville he founded the football team, helped with the construction of Bartlett and started some financial aid programs among other things before he moved back to Japan.
Takahashi did so many things to better the community at Maryville, and these events have been named after him in order to continue that tradition. By fixing things in the college woods, planting new plants, making sure the plants have a clean place to grow and continuing to keep the campus clean, we can better the lives of the students at Maryville College as well as the community as a whole.