As Longwood staff member Paula Ellison directs a truck to an empty space on the curb in front of Moss Hall, a half-dozen members of the Longwood basketball staff stand waiting — with piranhic urgency — to unload a bedroom’s worth of belongings.
Within minutes of the tailgate dropping, the vehicle is empty and a neatly constructed pile of storage bins, appliances and precious keepsakes sits on the sidewalk, ready to make the trip up the elevator to its owner’s new home away from home.
“Man, where were you guys when we were loading the truck?” quips the father, who drove his freshman daughter and her essentials from Virginia Beach that morning.
That process repeated itself morning and afternoon during Longwood’s two-day freshman move-in last week. For eight hours on back-to-back days, a small army of volunteers — composed of faculty, staff and early-arrival students — scurried up and down the sidewalk in front of Johns and Moss residence halls, eager to help the newest crop of Lancers navigate what can be a chaotic and emotional process of moving into their first college home.
But as some of the first people Longwood freshmen and their families encounter when they arrive on campus, Longwood’s move-in volunteers do more than lug boxes, give directions and hand over keys. They serve as a welcoming committee and set the tone for the tightknit campus community where members of the Class of 2029 will spend the next several years of their lives.
We want to be a friendly face... that’s the biggest thing we can offer them. We all have a job, but we all have good energy, and we just want to talk to them and let them know we’re excited they’re here.
Amber Bennett ’27
“We want to be a friendly face,” said Amber Bennett ’27, who this year distributed room keys to the new residents of Johns Hall. “That’s the biggest thing we can offer them. We all have a job, but we all have good energy, and we just want to talk to them and let them know we’re excited they’re here.”
Members of the Longwood cheerleading team kept that energy alive while unloading vehicles, splitting off to accompany the newly minted Lancers as they headed inside their residence halls. Sometimes the cheerleaders helped carry boxes and bins; other times, they just carried on a conversation. As volunteers, their role is to help Longwood’s new freshmen shoulder loads that are as much physical as they are emotional.
“It’s just about saying hello, being friendly, letting them know what to do and how to get started,” said Serenity Opie ’28, who joined her cheerleading teammates and other fellow Lancers in unloading hundreds of vehicles. “I love decorating rooms, so I’ve been able to suggest what they might need or where to find things. How if they’re looking for something, they should go to Walmart or the Five Below that just opened.”
With a break between vehicles, men’s basketball head coach Ronnie Thomas joked with the older brother of a freshman that, even though he didn’t attend Longwood, there was room for him on campus.
“We have grad school,” Thomas said. “You can still come back.”
As Ellison, who is the administrative assistant in student engagement, and Longwood’s campus police officers continued to direct the stream of loaded vehicles with assembly line efficiency, Thomas and members of his coaching staff bearhugged refrigerators and shelves, and peppered the new arrivals with familiar icebreakers: Which residence hall are you living in? Where are you from? What’s your major? One coach spied a lacrosse stick in an open bin and asked the student if she played. However, she had already gone to check in, so her dad responded.
“She did in high school,” he said. “She didn’t want to play in college, but she brought the stick in case she found somebody else who plays.”
Those conversations, said Thomas, are anything but small talk.
It’s really important for them to feel the love, the energy, the excitement that the Longwood and Farmville community presents.
Ronnie Thomas, head men's basketball coach
“It’s really important for them to feel the love, the energy, the excitement that the Longwood and Farmville community presents,” said Thomas, who was promoted to Longwood’s head men’s basketball coach this past spring after five seasons on the staff as an assistant.
“If you’re a parent dropping off your son or daughter, moving them into a room that’s basically four empty walls and a bed when you get there, that’s tough. To see so many people here who are giving their time to be a welcome face, give a hug, say hello and talk to them, we hope it gives parents a vision of how their sons and daughters will be cared for at Longwood.”
Sometimes, though, connections made on move-in day go beyond just conversation. Ellison, whose voice was an audible part of the move-in soundtrack as she directed traffic, is a recurring volunteer who frequently shows her softer side to parents struggling to say goodbye to their child for the first time.
“A lot of times, this is mom’s first kid dropoff, and, even though they’re adults, they’re still kids to their parents,” Ellison said. “We’re welcoming when they’re nervous, when they’re scared. I hug crying mothers. I give them my cell phone number and let them know that if they need me to, they can just call me or text me and I’ll go check on their kid. I like to reinforce to them that I’ve done this with my daughter, and I know what they’re going through.”
That’s part of Longwood’s charm. We’re family-oriented.
Paula Ellison, administrative assistant for student engagement
“That’s part of Longwood’s charm,” she continued. “We’re family-oriented.”
After move-in 2025, the Longwood family has grown by more than 1,000 new Lancers. And, thanks to the volunteers who helped welcome them, they’re now settled into their new home away from home.
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