Elizabethtown College has an annual event called Into the Streets around Halloween to incorporate the community and students. Students are learning skills and experience from volunteering engagement in a social environment. Events happen all around Elizabethtown that the community could be involved with. Etown has this function on campus in the KAV and is held at the fairground. The people would buy tickets for the event and walk and enjoy the activities to do.
Into the Streets is a particular function that offers opportunities to get everyone to enjoy the day all around Elizabethtown, from the College to small groups. Students at the College coordinate this event. The students promote this function with t-shirt sales and posters around town.
The College has sports organizations, clubs and groups of students participating in this event every year. One team that has done this for the past 20 years is the Etown wrestling team. Coach Eric Walker is the head coach of the wrestling team that took part in the Inside the Street event with their haunted house. The haunted house is something that will put people in the Halloween spirit. People who want to go into the haunted house buy the tickets and have an opportunity to enjoy the things inside. When customers of the haunted house exited, we asked if they would come again or if they were returning from a previous year.
“We have been to this event for the past three years with our kids and their friends, and we love it every year,” an Elizabethtown resident said.
The team comes with costumes and masks to scare the participants. Walking through the haunted house, the wrestling team had a good time putting on a show for the community during Halloween. Walker was very excited for this to come around. Every year, he always puts this weekend aside to put forth this event. This is something that brings their team close for team bonding. The haunted house is always anticipated in the town for kids around this time; the line, once it opened, extended to around 60 people. People enjoy the scares that come with the haunted house and the great weather that they can walk around for a while, not being very cold.
“The GEARS [Greater Elizabethtown Area Recreation & Community Services] program got a hold of me if we would do it twenty years ago, and we have been doing it ever since,” Walker said when asked how he got in touch with Into the Streets.
This event is something that most organizations get offered to do around this time, and that can bring in many new faces and ideas. People may think that this event is where people are offered and asked to come out and help. From the people seen around the places of interest, these people come out with their interest in helping with possible community service that would challenge everyone who supports and works this function.
“I think Into the Streets is a great event, and everyone should get involved, but I feel like we should not just get involved one day a year. When we see a need, we should be ready to serve, no matter what time of year it is,” Walker stated when asked if Into the Streets is something with which everyone around campus should interact.
The objective of Into the Streets is for the students of the College to be trained in large numbers as leaders in organizational groups to provide experience. This social gathering around Elizabethtown exposes real-world encounters with organizations that could benefit people who volunteer for this. This presents an easy way of getting into the community and being of help to those who could use some wisdom. Into the Streets is a great program that could grow to much more than a one-time-a-year event and have the people of Elizabethtown want to join and enjoy the activities that would interest them.
