SGA, Greeks clean up campus

Jessica Sasseen

Bags in hand, they gathered at Cherry Hall at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday and combed the campus. They were on a mission to find one thing – trash.

Forty people representing four organizations – Student Government Association and Kappa Delta, Alpha Omicron Pi and Chi Omega sororities- volunteered Tuesday afternoon to participate in a campus-wide clean-up. The event, sponsored every semester by SGA, is open to all students.

Nick Todd, chair of SGA’s Campus Improvements Committee, organized this semester’s clean-up.

“Our main goal for the campus clean-up is to get organizations involved and get them out on campus and actually having students do things on campus, not just having to rely just on facilities management and the university,” Todd said. “It’s a good motivation for students to actually help out in cleaning up campus.”

Thirty-five of the 40 participants were members of KD. Todd said only about 15 SGA members were present, some of which are KD members.

Louisville freshman Sara Peak is a member of both KD and SGA. She said she found the volunteer work to be beneficial.

“It’s everybody’s campus, and so it’s everybody’s job to keep it clean,” Peak said.

Todd was surprised where the majority of trash was picked up.

“The area around Cherry Hall and the sidewalks and surrounding buildings, the high traveled entrances, they were dirtier than the south end of campus,” Todd said.

The trash-picking pairs gathered at the Downing University Center an hour later, still grasping their bags of loot. All 12 bags used for the clean-up came back full. The participants were amazed with what they had found.

“At the end, one person found a love letter, and one person found a golf ball,” Todd said. “Some of the girls really got a kick out of reading that love letter.”

Peak was surprised with the contents of the trash on campus.

“There were mostly cigarette butts we picked up in between cracks in the sidewalks,” she said. “But most of the trash seemed to come from the construction sites.”

Todd was encouraged by the large number of volunteers.

“From what I know, we haven’t had a very good turnout in the past,” Todd said. “From what I hear, this is one of the best turnouts that we’ve had in a long while.”

Reach Jessica Sasseen at [email protected].