Big Red students at O.U. turned out for The Big Event community service effort in a big way this year with more than 4,800 volunteers donating nearly 20,000 hours of service in the Norman and Oklahoma City areas.

This massive one-day project is almost entirely student driven. Among the 165 job sites and activities addressed in March were the completions of playgrounds, a hundred miles of cleaned streets, freshly painted buildings and cleaner neighborhoods.

Planning already is under way to expand the effort to additional campuses in Oklahoma next year. Our judges called it a tremendous community partnership. We call O.U.'s Big Event a full course of good news for Oklahoma students and communities.