BOWLING GREEN, Ky.-Over 1,000 future Hilltoppers from Kentucky all the way to Tennessee came home from school to a surprise in their front yard. 

“No one told me that I was gonna get a sign today,” said WKU class of 2026 student Chapel Bryant. 

Western Kentucky University staff dropped off ‘WKU bound’ signs to students in the class of 2026! Many of them are graduating from high school this week. 

“I’m very excited to go to college. The next four years of my life are determined and I think I’m gonna have a great time,” said Bryant. 

News 40 got to hop in and drive around with staff to the students’ homes. 

They started the initiative during the pandemic to celebrate while social distancing.

“Whenever we weren’t really able to celebrate incoming freshman’s successes that year of the pandemic, whenever it first kicked off we then decided to do these on a larger scale,” said WKU Coordinator of Campus Visits and Events Owen Posey. 

They had such a great response, they even expanded it to delivering signs hundreds of miles away…renting cars to deliver in Eastern Kentucky. 

“While we might just be delivering a sign to them, if there’s anything they need from any of our departments we would go out of our way to make sure that they had that,” said Posey. 

It means so much more than a sign…it’s a symbol of the future and what’s to come.

“I have my sign where I’m graduating from and then I have my sign where I’m gonna spend the next four years or even more there. It shows how I’m moving on and in a new direction,” said Bryant. 

And some kids even got a visit from WKU President Caboni himself!

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