It was a cool, cloudy spring day, but sunbeams shone and smiles radiated warm vibes from Furman University\u2019s main entrance where the Friday Afternoon Club held court.<\/p>\n
These self-appointed greeters and spreaders of joy flashed peace and love signs and yelled \u201cHappy Friday\u201d to folks who drove by. The trolley driver rung his bell. Officer 21 honked. A man on a scooter yelled back, \u201cHappy Friday!\u201d<\/p>\n
The Club is composed of four members, all sophomores and class of 2027, all best friends since their first year: Opal Weber, a biology major; Pauline Bailey, a French major; Abby Stabler, a health sciences major; and Lanie Crumpton, a biology major.<\/p>\n
In spring 2024 they started setting up camp chairs and an inflatable sofa after lunch nearly every Friday, rain or shine, in sickness or in health. On a recent afternoon someone had written \u201cPeace\u201d on one side of a piece of cardboard and \u201cLOVE\u201d on the other side. \u201cSomething Stupid\u201d by Frank and Nancy Sinatra and other groovy tunes played from a phone.<\/p>\n
Weber is carrying on a family tradition. Her dad, John Weber, graduated from Furman in 2001. When he was a student he and his friends sat and ate \u201cPub Subs\u201d and waved to people in the same spot where his daughter sits now with her friends.<\/p>\n
But mostly the students do this because it\u2019s fun.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we like to see people smile,\u201d Bailey says. \u201cSometimes people will stop and tell us we made their day, and that makes our day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat happened today. Someone like stopped their car and said \u2018I love what you\u2019re doing,\u2019\u201d Stabler says as an alt country song plays in the background.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people ask us what we\u2019re protesting, but it\u2019s just peace and love,\u201d Lanie says.<\/p>\n
Who couldn\u2019t use more peace and love? You know where to find it on Friday afternoons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four sophomores take it upon themselves to set up camp on most Friday afternoons inside the main entrance to help welcome passersby. For one student, it’s continuing a tradition. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":36962,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,21,16,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-health-sciences","category-modern-languages-and-literature","category-student-life"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36960"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36975,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36960\/revisions\/36975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}