Courses selected? Check. Textbooks purchased? Check. Two-story house renovated? ... Check! While internal demolition doesn't usually show up on the typical to-do list of a Cornell freshman, participants in this year's Cornell Pre-Orientation Service Trips (POST) worked on this and many other community projects to get familiar with the Ithaca area through community service and to meet other new students.

Beginning Aug. 12 and ending just in time for the start of Cornell's Orientation, Aug. 17, 53 first-year and transfer students worked with 14 student leaders on such projects around town as preparing meals at Loaves and Fishes, landscaping at the Ithaca Sciencenter and the Longview residential senior community, and removing invasive species and improving trails for the Finger Lakes Land Trust. They camped out on the cafeteria floor at Boynton Middle School.

On Aug. 15, for example, eight Cornell freshmen and Tom Noble '08, a former "POST-er" who served as their program leader, spent the better part of the day demolishing the interior of a house in downtown Ithaca through Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services (INHS), which will sell the house when completed to a low-income, first-time buyer.

But first, the students got insight into INHS's role in the Ithaca community from Eva Capobianco, coordinator of INHS's Senior Home Assistance Repair Program, which provides free labor to elderly and disabled homeowners. INHS, she explained, provides affordable housing, renovations and education to first-time homeowners. In the last 30 years, INHS has renovated more than 100 homes as well as built new houses from the ground up.

"The great thing about volunteer groups," said Capobianco, "is the free labor, which helps to keep the cost of renovations down. We usually hire contractors to do the work."

As students used sledgehammers to knock out the wallboard between studs and disposed of debris in a large dumpster, Noble explained that this is the first year that participants were able to choose which areas of community service they wanted to provide. Each day, the students worked at a different location.

Margaret Ding, Eng. '11, who worked on the INHS' house, said she found out about POST through a Cornell engineering event for women and felt POST would be a good opportunity to become more involved in community service.

Leanne Wesfall, ILR '11, who worked at Boynton Middle School cleaning out lockers, washing walls and vacuuming rooms, said, "I'm a [Cornell] Tradition fellow, so I did this program so I could meet people with similar interests."

Matt Zimmerman, CALS '08, who was one of the group leaders at Boynton, said that many of the POST leaders participated in POST as freshmen.

"I met some of my best friends in POST," said Zimmerman. "At the beginning, students are meek, but you make some very close lifelong friends here. This is a really fun way for students to get acquainted."

Celia Smith '09 and Julia Langer '08 are writer interns at the Cornell Chronicle.