With four weeks until graduation, Ohio University senior Amy Schmidbauer has a lot on her to-do list: See a ghost at The Ridges, get a tattoo, snag an Athens block.
But thanks to one student organization, Schmidbauer crossed one item off her wish list when she was surprised with two free front-row tickets to see B.o.B and Far East Movement May 20 at The Convo.
“I screamed really loud and I couldn’t stop smiling,” Schmidbauer, who is studying special education, said of receiving her tickets. “I just kept going, ‘Are you serious?’ ”
OU Dreams, a recently formed sub-committee of the Student Alumni Board, collects seniors’ wishes and attempts to grant them before graduation. Jerad Claytor, a senior studying biology, came up with the idea after thinking about his own list of activities he wants to do before leaving Athens.
“My bucket list is huge, but I haven’t fulfilled it,” Claytor said. “I know if there’s things I want to do, there’s going to be things that other people want to do, too.”
Students can submit their wishes via Twitter, Facebook or email. The five-person committee reads the submissions — about two dreams per week, Claytor said — and then decides which ones are the most feasible.
Initially, Schmidbauer’s wish was a bit beyond the committee’s reach.
“I replied as a joke that I wanted to meet Justin Bieber,” she said. “(Claytor) tweeted me back and said, ‘I can’t get Justin Bieber, what else do you want to do?’”
Schmidbauer suggested tickets to next week’s B.o.B concert — “I didn’t want a gift card to Chipotle. … I wanted to do something I could do uniquely at OU,” she said — and committee member Ashley Laber took on the challenge. A university events programmer for the University Program Council, which is helping to sponsor the concert, Laber asked around and eventually scored two free front-row tickets for Schmidbauer.
But instead of just handing them off, the OU Dreams committee aims to make each wish as special as possible. Laber pretended to be interviewing Schmidbauer, a former sorority sister, about the concert for a UPC project. Meanwhile, the rest of the committee gathered outside Schmidbauer’s apartment to surprise her with the tickets.
“They were all standing there, and I handed her this envelope and told her it was a photo release,” said Laber, who is studying organizational communications. “She was just freaking out. It was so great to watch that happen.”
Schmidbauer’s wish was the first the team has granted, but more are in the works. Claytor said students have asked to tour President Roderick McDavis’s house, spend the night at The Ridges and sit next to friends from other academic colleges at graduation.
The OU Dreams committee, four members of which are graduating in June, would like to see their efforts continue once they graduate. The goal is to get “seniors helping seniors,” Claytor said, a mantra that has become more fulfilling than crossing items off his own wish list.
“I’ve done some community service in the past, but not much, just some different things that you don’t really see the impact that it makes,” he said. “Once you get out there and do something for someone that you can actually see, I might have changed this person’s life. … It’s been one of the highlights of my college career.”
al106606@ohiou.edu
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