Collegetown Cleanup
by Richard Gu
I went to Collegetown Cleanup with my buddy Will on October 24th! The week prior to the event, I had been searching for interesting opportunities for service hours and found this. It definitely looked interesting to me, as I had seen quite a bit of trash while walking around certain parts of Collegetown and felt that I could make a difference by attending this volunteer event. In addition, I feel like it’s partially the responsibility of students at Cornell to take care of the areas close to campus to ensure that we have an environment that the school and its students can thrive in. So I thought this was a great cause to begin with. It also seemed like a great social opportunity to be a part of. Going on walks in the morning always wakes me up, so Collegetown Cleanup was a great way to combine that with actually doing something productive for society. Soon after arriving at the scene, we split into small groups to take on different areas of Collegetown. I broke off in a group with Will, Aaron, and Will’s big Denise. We had a fun time cleaning up Seneca street and also getting to know each other better. I got to hear about Aaron’s experiences as an undergraduate these past three years and Denise’s AEM and Info Sci (or is it Info Sci and AEM?)experiences. Everyone at the event was super nice and I loved getting to know them better. Our small group collected two full bags of trash and stuffed things in there until we couldn’t fit anymore. We had a scary encounter with some shards of glass, as well as a broken plate which we were tempted to
put in our bag but that probably wouldn’t have been a very good idea. It was a really great feeling at the end of the event because we saw how much trash all the groups combined had picked up, and just for an hour of our time. Think about that, just an hour out of our days and we already made Collegetown that much cleaner. Seeing that, as well as the social experience, has made this one of my favorite service events and I’ve started attending it regularly (every Sunday morning, sign up folks!)
