Members of Cornell’s Greek community met to clean the streets of Collegetown yesterday. The event, dubbed “Collegetown Clean-up” lasted for approximately three hours as volunteers from fraternities and sororities worked in one-hour shifts to help remove trash in the streets.
The volunteers met in front of The Nines on College Ave. to begin their clean-up efforts. Members of each chapter traveled together throughout Collegetown to collect garbage. Trash bags and rubber gloves were provided to the chapter volunteers.
Erica Furfaro ’05, vice president of university and community relations for the Panhellenic Association, Chase Nielson ’06, vice president of the university and community relations for the Interfraternity Council and Lynn Chao ’06, vice president of university and community relations for the Multicultural Greek Letter Council helped organize the event.
“The purpose of Collegetown clean-up is to try to help keep the neighborhood clean for everyone living here,” Furfaro said. “We sent Greek members to all of the main streets and even side alleys to pick up trash from this past weekend. Each house was given a specific street to clean up so all of Collegetown is covered,” she added.
Collegetown Clean-up is one of the largest community service activities that the three Greek councils organize together and is held once a semester.
“We have had a great response to our efforts in the past, so we decided that this was a community service activity that we should do every semester,” Furfaro said. “A Common Council member who lives in Collegetown even came down to our meeting spot to thank us for cleaning up her street. This just shows how everyone is grateful for our efforts,” she noted.
Nielson explained why Collegetown Clean-up is beneficial to Ithaca’s residents. “Both students and local families can see how the members of the Greek system care about the community. We are sometimes blamed for the mess, and this is our chance to show everyone we care about where we live,” Nielson said. “The streets are messy and do look bad after Friday and Saturday night, so we try to get people to help clean it up and pick up garbage all day,” he added.
Students returned to The Nines to deliver the bags of trash they collected. “It is really cool to see everyone doing something so productive on their Sunday afternoon,” said Jill Weiskopf ’06. “This is my first year participating in C-town Clean-up, and I think it is a great idea, especially since I live here.”
“It is also nice to show everyone that we care about where we live. People get to see that members of fraternities and sororities respect Cornell and appreciate our community,” Weiskopf added.
Archived article by Allison Markowitz
Sun Staff Writer