Stories this week at Wake Forest

WAKE FOREST STUDENTS OFFER FREE TAX ASSISTANCE

Wake Forest professor Yvonne Hinson and 30 of her introductory tax students are turning the downtown bus station in Winston-Salem into a temporary income tax preparation office. The group is working with an IRS program called VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance). On Saturday, Feb. 24, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. they will assist taxpayers who can file using the 1040-EZ, 1040-A, or other basic 1040 forms. They will also offer three-hour sessions on Wednesday, Feb. 28, and Saturday, March 3. “We’re there to help those people who can’t afford other assistance, or who don’t know that assistance is even available to them,” says Hinson, an assistant professor in the Calloway School of Business and Accountancy and a PricewaterhouseCoopers Faculty Fellow. The sessions will be held in the second floor conference room of the Winston-Salem Transit Authority, 1060 N. Trade St. For more information, call the News Service.

LUNCH COUNTER SIT-IN INSPIRATION FOR DOWNTOWN EVENT

In 1960, students from Wake Forest University and Winston-Salem State University joined together to protest segregation in a historic lunch counter sit-in in Winston-Salem. Forty-one years later, city leaders ask how race relations have changed in “Moving Forward: A Conversation About Race Relations,” to be held at 7 p.m. Feb. 27, at the old Woolworth building, located at 408 Liberty St. A panel of speakers will include the Rev. Jerry Drayton, pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church and a long-time civil rights activist; Bill Tatum, Winston-Salem’s NAACP president; and Carl Crothers, executive editor of the Winston-Salem Journal. They will talk about the past, present and future of race relations in Winston-Salem. The media is invited to attend this free, public event. Parking will be available nearby.

RHYTHMS OF AFRICA: WAKE FOREST GETS THE BEAT

Wake Forest graduate Bill Scheidt will demonstrate African drumming from 11 a.m. to noon on Feb. 27 in Benson University Center’s Third Floor Rotunda. Scheidt has been to Tanzania several times and trained with an African drum troupe. He will play, but he will also bring drums for the audience to try their hands at African drumming.

WAKE FOREST STUDENTS RELATE TO ‘SURVIVOR’ EXPERIENCE

While most viewers cringe at the sight of the creepy crawly insects, bad weather and living conditions on CBS’s “Survivor,” some Wake Forest students know what the contestants are enduring. “A lot of it is familiar-the bush fires, the monsoon season, and especially the bugs,” says junior Julie Black. Black is one of many Wake Forest students who have spent an entire semester studying abroad in Australia. “I had a red-bellied poisonous black snake in my apartment one night, and I found a brown spider about the size of a tarantula in my apartment another night,” said Black. For a student’s perspective on “Survivor’s” Australian setting, call the News Service.