A group of Honors College students came together Saturday morning at Lutheran Cemetery for the college’s annual Spring Service Project.
About 60 students cleaned and refurbished the grave sites in the cluttered cemetery.
Biological sciences senior Stewart Humble headed the project and worked with Landscape Services to provide tools for the job. He said this year’s project is an expansion of the work the Honors College completed last year in the cemetery.
“We came in here last year and it was really overgrown,” Humble said. “If people come back here each and every year, just once a year, you’d be surprised just how well it keeps up.”
The cemetery has no funding, and it relies on volunteers to help keep the area clean and well-kept, Humble said.
Students spent the day cleaning up the cemetery in groups. Some painted the worn, browned tombs a bright white. Others cleaned brush, pressure-washed, weed-whacked and raked and bagged overgrowth.
An additional part of the service project included a group of students recording the name, date of birth, date of death and epitaph of each grave into smartphones to be used in a global positioning mobile website. This site can be used by visiting family and friends to find the location of their loved one’s grave, Humble said.
Honors College Associate Dean Granger Babcock has been a part of the Honors College service projects every year since he came to the Honors College in 2006. The college has been to Sweet Olive Cemetery several times and to the Lutheran Cemetery once before, Babcock said. He said this year’s work is different from previous years because of the innovative mapping project.
“We’re supposed to give knowledge and labor and community service back to the state,” Babcock said. “And we value that a lot in the Honors College.”
The group used this project to show their dedication to the Baton Rouge community. Megan O’Connor, anthropology freshman, said working on service projects keeps the group connected.
“One thing about college is that you can become very isolated,” O’Connor said. “[Service work] makes you balanced. … And it makes you think about other people more than yourself.”
O’Connor said she hopes students working in the project will feel a sense of heritage and remember the time they spent in Lutheran Cemetery.
 
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Contact Shannon Roberts at [email protected]