Honors Students ‘Fight Dirty’
Tybee Island is home to beautiful beaches along the Atlantic Ocean. However, it is also riddled with cigarette butts, plastic bags and glass bottles. Tybee Beach Cleanup is a volunteer-based origination who “fights dirty.” They work to keep beaches clean and free from any man-made materials. The Armstrong State University Honors Program and the Georgia Southern University Honors Program joined forces to help this organization remove litter from the beach. On October 21, the students spent their Saturday morning engaging with one another while serving their local community.
Hannah Dorough and Carly Mathis take out the trash on Tybee.
The students focused on the north side of the island looking for any material, unnatural to the surrounding environment. This included cigarette buds, soda cans, water bottles, pieces of foam, shards of plastic and glass. The local community organization, Tybee Beach Cleanup, made the event possible. They provided the buckets and trash grabbers. Afterwards, Kathryn Propst, the representative for the club, helped the students organize the trash into recyclables and waste.
Georgia Southern University Honors Student, Hannah Dorough (psychology ’18) said, “The generosity of the Tybee Beach Cleanup organization was amazing. They provided everything we needed because the main goal for them is keeping the beach clean. It was an awesome experience to be able to spend my morning supporting a great cause while getting to know other Armstrong State Students.”
Georgia Southern University and Armstrong State University are currently undergoing a consolidation of the two schools. Once this consolidation is complete, the Honors Program at both campuses will be united. This event gave students the chance to get to know and to connect with one another.
Four Honors Students, who participated at the beach cleanup, Hannah Dorough, Morgan Gallahue (Biology ’18), Kaley Powers (cell and molecular biology ’18) and Linnea Ryan (history ’19) also had the opportunity to participate in the Honors Consolidation Panel at the Southern Regional Honors Council Conference in 2017. They focused on the challenges and benefits of uniting the two Honors Programs from a student’s perspective.
“Our history of all working together last year allowed for this event to come together. I am happy that we were able to get both Honors Programs together to enhance the future and spirit of the new university. This beach cleanup gave us the chance to really get to know one another, so I think this event was a success,” Powers said.
Friendship is the main goal of the students from both Honors Programs. The consolidation will allow for more bonds to be made between the two groups. Elias Frazier (psychology ’17), a student at Armstrong State University addressed the importance of more events like this. “We all came out here to do the same thing: clean up the beach and give back to the community. We are all college students, and our lives can get a bit stressful sometimes, so it was nice to enjoy the beautiful weather. I was able to spend time with my friends and meet some new people from Georgia Southern University. We need to really start getting to know each other before the consolidation is complete because then the transition will be easier,” he said.
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