The service fraternity at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, (VMRCVM),Omega Tau Sigma (OTS), hosted its annual community Easter egg hunt Saturday, April 23.

For about ten years, OTS has hosted this free event for the community at VMRCVM’s Grove Park off Duck Pond Drive.


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The Easter egg hunt attracts nearly 100 children, ages one and up, and their parents with activities such as face painting, balloon animals, games, and the hiding of Easter eggs.

OTS holds a fundraiser before the egg hunt in order to raise money to buy the face paints, balloons, coloring books, crayons, and, of course, enough candy to fill all 500 Easter eggs.

The event kicked off at 10 a.m. with children lining up to hunt eggs.

Children up to age four got a 30 second head start as the older children awaited their turn to run and find chocolaty treasures.

OTS Faculty Advisor Alison Elward attended the Easter egg hunt for the first time this year and so excited to see the community come together.

“We just want to provide a fun opportunity for the kids to come to our college and find some eggs and just have a nice community event, provide a little bit of fun and entertainment”

So what started this Easter egg hunt extravaganza?

President of OTS Derek O’Dell reflected on what led OTS to start holding this free community event.

“OTS has done Easter eggs hunts to sort of help out the community, give back to the community and sort of have an opportunity for the kids to learn about bunnies. It’s sort of a way for us to teach about bunnies and still have fun at Easter.”

Not only can OTS help the community by hosting this event, but it is also an opportunity to teach children a little more about how to care for an “Easter” bunny.

This year’s Easter bunny mascot was 7-year old year old Mookie, a lop-eared rabbit. Mookie watched the activities from his spot on the hill as children who finished the hunt came to pet him and learn more about bunnies.

Four year old Nora Kuhlman wasn’t fooled that Mookie was the one hiding eggs that morning.

“He looks like a real bunny that you get in a pet store, but he’s not a pet. He stands on two legs and he’s in a costume.”

But children are not the only ones excited for the event. Parents like Jake Johnson love this free event for the quality family time.

In the years since OTS has held the event, word has spread throughout the area about the event, from Virginia Tech faculty to various community groups around town.

“It’s been a lot of fun to be out here as a family and see my son explore. My wife is in a couple of mom’s groups around Blacksburg and so it’s through those groups that she first heard about the Easter egg hunt.”

Former OTS President Valerie Reinoso loves hosting the event each year and seeing knew faces from the community come out to the event.

“We like to do things that connect the school and the community. Sometimes we just like to do things for the community, so that’s why we like to tie in the pet bunny, so people can learn that this is how you take care of a pet rabbit and tie in just a tiny bit of the veterinary sciences with the fun of the Easter egg hunt. Just the whole thing was fun and we have this perfect grove that’s just made for this hunt.”

This event is one that parents and children in the Blacksbug community anticipate every year.

Local father Reid Tyson said, “The kids look forward to the Easter egg hunt every year. When they talk about Easter, this is what they talk about.”

OTS Community Easter Egg Hunt

Photo Slideshow - Revised

My photo slideshow takes viewers through a behind-the-scenes look at Tech Tonight, a student run television news segment that is broadcast on Virginia Tech's television station, VTTV. These pictures portray Cast A as they prepare and shoot the program.

Websites Gone Wrong: Mini Assignment

Hosanna 1, or what I think is the worst website ever.

Where to begin on critiquing this website...

I guess I'll just start with my style score. From 1 to 5, with 1 being really bad and 5 being really good, I give this site a 0 (or in other words, this site is really really bad!!).

Apparently this site sells Afghan Hounds, along with about 100 other things. It looks like just an ad site, but I'm really not sure. There is way too much animation in the background and no consistency with fonts, so it's very hard to read anything. There are also way too many colors.  There are also sections blinking at you in different colors, plus with the white font color and animated background, it is very hard on the eyes to read. If anything, this site could use a lot more white space to break up the text.

There is so much text crammed together that you can't even separate the sections. There is also way too much scrolling. If anything, those who run the site should separate it by category into many different sites that you can click on. Not only would this eliminate the scrolling, but it would also break up the text. I mean, where do you even begin reading this site? There is literally text everywhere.

This site is also apparently a religious site, but I have no idea how that fits in to buying dogs. There is just so much going on, it is very hard to tell the purpose of this site. I'm afraid to click around in case it's a scam because there are so many different messages being conveyed. They talk about selling the hounds, but then the religious portion of the page throws me off and I don't want to click on the links since everything is so random; I'm not sure where it will actually lead me.

It's hard to really trust this site. It's so poorly put together, you can't help but think it's a scam of some sort. I really have no idea what this site is about. After looking at it more, there are is also a link for music, and sections pertaining to the government and military. I'm really at a loss for words.

I guess the only good thing is that it doesn't have music or videos that play automatically.  Although I am quite surprised that it doesn't. I thought this website had everything!

This site is definitely going on my top 10 worst websites ever list.

In this podcast, I'm speaking with Dena-Marie Smith, who just returned from her trip to Israel. With all of the violence in the Middle East, I don't think I could take the risk of traveling over there and thought it would be interesting to get the point-of-view of someone who did visit to see if / what areas are safe for tourists. It's hard to really know what is going on in different parts of the Middle East with media outlets putting their own "spin" on stories. As a media consumer, I'm not sure if any areas in the Middle East are safe or if there are, in fact, places that tourists can visit with a very small risk of something bad happening.

Ms. Smith went with a church group who had visited before, so some group members already knew their way around. After speaking with her, it sounds like Israel is well secured by its army and there are certain parts of the country, such as holy sites, that are safe for tourists and citizens to visit.

Thank you to Dena-Marie Smith, who was thoughtful enough to help me with this project, and a special thanks to Josh Woodward for his song "A Song."

Crowdsourcing Results

The question I posted to my Facebook page for people to respond to was, "For college students, how did you spend your spring break and what made you choose these plans over others?" I only received four responses, which is much less than what I was expecting.  Of the people who responded, three went out of town just to get away from Blacksburg and do something different to pass the time. One person went home so that she could work and earn a little bit of money to pay off some bills once she returned to school. 

It could be that not a lot of people responded because they had already told me in person what they did over spring break. I also posted the question in the middle of the day when students would be in class, so maybe it was too far down on their "News Feed" once they got back to their computers.  Or maybe it was just a hectic week getting back from spring break and they saw my post, said they would post to it later after they did homework or something, and then forgot to come back to it later. Either way, it sounded like most people got away from Blacksburg for their spring break, whether it was going home, doing mission work, or just doing some traveling for some different scenery. 

Photo Slideshow from Nicole Hill on Vimeo.

My photo slideshow takes viewers through a behind-the-scenes look at Tech Tonight, a student run television news segment that is broadcast on Virginia Tech's television station, VTTV. These pictures portray Cast A as they prepare and shoot the program.