Student volunteers raced across campus Sunday afternoon picking up trash as part of Alpha Phi Omega’s Campus Cleanup Extravaganza.
The coed service fraternity sponsored the campuswide cleanup in order to get people involved with service projects, beautify the campus and get the word out about its fall recruitment starting Tuesday, said Lindsay Webber, service vice president.
“We are a service fraternity; we do service all the time,” Webber said. “We want to share with other people how fun it can be, while reaching out and giving back to our campus.”
A group of about 80 gathered to help out, and about 35 of them were members, meaning most of the volunteers were from outside the fraternity, Webber said.
Volunteers could form teams before the event or join one once they arrived.
“We invited a lot of different organizations from around campus,” Webber said. “We encouraged everyone to come out because, honestly, we just want to do service with other people.”
After the cleanup, everyone met at Flavet Field for a celebration of free food, drinks and prizes.
The grand prize, Olympic-style medals and gift cards to Starbucks, was for the team that picked up the most trash. Other prizes were for the most spirited, best dressed and the team that found the strangest object.
This year’s strangest was an old, rusted road sign.
Two fraternity brothers, David Wolfe and Alvaro Salkeld, took the idea of best dressed very literally and went home with the prize.
“Last time, lots of people came in costumes and had team chants,” Salkeld said. “When we heard there was a prize for best dressed, we instantly thought of suits because this way we count as spirited and also finely dressed.”
The two Tuxedo Trashmen brought extra suits from Goodwill in order to recruit other team members.
By the end of the day, the teams picked up more than 20 bags of trash and about 10 bags of recycling.
“It was a very huge success,” Webber said. “We’re planning on doing it again at the beginning of next semester, and hopefully we’ll get an even bigger turnout since it won’t be football season.”
