Trent University will celebrate its inaugural and virtual event, “Trent Day” to showcase school spirit, share empowering stories and promote giving to support student needs on Friday.
Each campus college including the Durham campus will host donation campaigns for their respective houses and their affiliated students. The University will match all donations dollar-for-dollar to the Trent Fund up to $15,000. The fundraiser will last for 24 hours.
“We were looking for creative ways to build more support for students,” said Lee Hays, alumni engagement and services director. “We really got talking about founding values about the community so we thought, how we can celebrate this in a big way on an annual basis.”
The free event will kick off with a virtual music performance from Trent alumni musicians such as The Jerry Cans and I, The Mountain on Thursday at 7:00 p.m. It will be hosted by culinary personalities, sisters and alumni Maddie and Kiki Longo; Canada’s favourite “Female Grill Masters”.
A presentation called “The Last Lecture”, will feature an address by Ryan Palaro, graduating student, Melissa Law, alumnus, Natalie Nelson, LEC academic skills instructor and Professor Bill Smale from the School of Education who will offer their words of inspiration on Friday at 4:00 p.m.
The lecture is meant as a motivating farewell address for graduating students before convocation.
Alumni and this year’s graduating class are encouraged to post memories of their campus experience on social media using the hashtag #TrentDay that will be featured by the university to show school spirit.
“It’s a great way for students and the local community to show how much that community supports them as a student,” said Hays. “We’re also giving thanks to the campus communities.”
Trent Day’s date is a reference to The Trent Act of Apr. 3, 1963. The date the university received its first charter and was founded.