Campus Clean-Up

By Jada Butler
News Editor

The Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity (SAE) and the Coalition for Conservation club joined forces to make LIU Post a cleaner, greener campus through their co-hosted campus clean-up event on Friday, April 13. The coalition and SAE were joined by sororities Delta Zeta and Alpha Epsilon Phi to collect trash in various locations across campus, including the residence halls, Hillwood Commons, Pratt Recreation Center, the Winnick House garden and labyrinth, academic buildings, and the Chipmunk Trail. There was also a contest involved: whichever team collected the most trash would win $50.

“We don’t want trash and plastic littered around campus because it’s harmful to the environment and animals,” Makayla Lopez, a sophomore psychology major and vice president of Coalition for Conservation, said. “We have a lot of wildlife on campus,” she added.

Twenty-five students met at Hillwood Commons at noon before splitting up into four groups. The teams met back at Hillwood at 2:40 p.m. to weigh the collected trash and declare the winner. The team of four students from Delta Zeta won the contest by collecting three bags from the Chipmunk Trail near Hillwood Commons.

“That could be considered the most littered area [on campus] in terms of bottles and cans,” Lopez said.

“We are not only trying to make ourselves look good, but also the [LIU Post] community around us,” Gilberto Torres, president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, said. “If our community does well, we do well.”

This is the third time the coalition has held a campus clean-up day, once as a part of the Earth Day celebrations, and last semester. The coalition promotes conservation and environmental sustainability through several activities each year, including tie-dying recycled T-shirts, selling succulents and creating a campus vegetable garden. They will host a fourth campus clean-up day again in the fall.