Auburn University students are used to receiving the occasional free thing on campus: soft drinks from UPC, candy and coupons from the SGA candidates and the feeling of being No. 1 in the BCS rankings from our athletic department.
There is one thing that all these things have in common: They are all sponsored by specific organizations.
Each time you pick up a soft drink from the Coca-Cola van you are expected to pick up a flier for the next UPC event.
After several years of being on The Plains, you get accustomed to these things and are weary of accepting any free handouts out of fear of being hassled into joining a group, attending an event or voting for a candidate.
Which is why a group of college students passing out free food on campus sounds too good to be true.
If you haven't noticed them already, Ross Anderson, Eric Dooley and Jordan Vrbas are the guys who post up next to Cater Lawn in front of Tichenor Hall to cook hamburgers every Friday.
They purchase all the food themselves every Thursday at Sam's Club, load up their truck Friday morning and get the grill going for hungry students before noon.
What's the catch, you ask?
"It's a very simple linear progression," Vrbas said. "God loves us, we love you, you love someone else. There's not much to it, but at the same time there's everything to it."
Before you start thinking that these guys are going to force their love for God onto you with delicious grilled meat, you're wrong.
"Even if they don't want any piece of God involved in it," Anderson said, "you can still love someone else, and that's the purpose."
Therein lies the beauty in all of this.
After indulging in the burgers and making small talk with the guys for a few weeks, the thought of using them as my subject for a multimedia project I had coming up began conjuring in my head.
It wasn't until I started interviewing them for the project that I heard anything about their religious beliefs.
Every time I asked them why they were doing this or what organization they were with before, the religious undertones never came up.
This is why I admire them and what they are doing so much.
Altruistic acts are rare to come across these days, even more so on a college campus.
It would have been just as simple for them to go out and preach their message of God and their religious beliefs from the start.
But they didn't.
During my several visits to grab a burger Friday, I stood and witnessed several people wishing to donate to their fund / project.
After seeing them scramble to find a place to take money, I asked them during my interview why they don't just put a tip jar out to accept donations.
"We don't feel called to ask for money or to say 'we're footing this, we need your help,'" Vrbas said. "If you're really serving someone, you shouldn't worry about how it's going to affect you--you should care about that person. We'll accept donations, but in the end, we'll pay for it, and it's not like it's skin off of our back."
Thursday after completing my project, the thought of their selfless act continued to resonate with me as I showed my roommates my finished video.
That night my roommates and I were given a large catering platter of BBQ leftover from a Greek Week event.
We sat and looked over the massive amount of pulled pork in awe like kids in a candy store.
Then, like a lightbulb going off in our heads, it hit us.
The linear progression had reached the final point.
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