Residents of Euclid Avenue who slept in on Saturday might have been surprised to find green door hangers and a cleaner lawn outside their houses when they woke up.

As part of Syracuse University’s Earth Day celebration, volunteers poured out of the Erwin First United Methodist Church on Euclid Avenue around 10:30 a.m. Saturday, to clean up the surrounding environment.

This effort was the biggest of its kind in central New York that day, said Andrew Rayner, a member of the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency, which helped to co-sponsor the event.

Approximately 100 Syracuse University students sported a different kind of orange this weekend, as volunteers took to the streets clad in orange traffic bibs and armed with spades, shovels and rakes, on a mission to beautify the surrounding parts of campus.

‘Overall I think this event was really successful,’ said Laura Dicarlo, a coordinator for the event. ‘We had way more people than we expected, everyone cleaned up where they were supposed to, and everyone did a really good job.’

The project targeted nearly all the surrounding university community, ranging from Westminster Park to Thornden Park, and participants also cleaned various parts of Euclid, Comstock and Ostrom Avenues.

Though not all who participated were SU or State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry students, almost everyone had a direct connection to the SU community.

Harry Lewis, 81, who has been living in the university community for 49 years, has been participating in SU’s Earth Day Cleanup for the last 10 years.

‘Especially after something like Mayfest, it’s important to get out here and pitch in,’ he said. ‘For the people like me who are crazy enough to live here year round, it’s good to see people out here helping the community.

The event was also coupled with the culmination of another one of SU’s community service programs, the ‘Adopt-A-Street Program.’ Adopt-A-Street is an initiative of the Office of Orientation and Off-Campus Programs that provides SU and ESF student organizations with a long-term service project in the neighborhoods adjacent to campus.

Many fraternities and sororities participated in Adopt-A-Street throughout the year, in order to satisfy required community service hours.

Sixteen groups were recognized in total at this event for their general participation in the Adopt-A-Street program, and four groups were especially recognized for their continued participation in the program.

But the cleanup wasn’t without its lessons.

‘One thing I noticed is that if people didn’t smoke as much, we wouldn’t have as much trash to pick up,’ said Joe Stahler, an undeclared freshman.

But even if the work wasn’t glamorous, students like Manny Mock may have felt a source of pride in cleaning up their community.

‘It feels good to get out here and clean up,’ said Mock, a junior marketing and accounting major whose fraternity, Acacia, participated in the Adopt-A-Street program all year. ‘We’re trying to save the world, you know?’

pwsmithj@syr.edu

Published on April 27, 2008 at 12:00 pm