Group invites students, E. L. to help in post-game cleanup

By Alanna Thiede | Originally Published: 09/16/10 9:50pm | No comments

Football Saturdays are known for tailgating, rowdiness and the thrill of the game, but the Sundays after can leave the streets of East Lansing strewn with trash.
MSU’s Community Relations Coalition, or CRC, will be on hand Sunday to clean-up after MSU’s Saturday football game against Notre Dame.

CRC is encouraging East Lansing residents — both students and long-term residents — to pitch in at 10:30 a.m. Sunday for one of its annual neighborhood clean ups, said Olivia Seifert, CRC’s intern coordinator.

Volunteers will meet at the parking lot behind East Lansing City Hall, 410 Abbot Road, and then disperse in various areas of East Lansing to gather trash in public areas and front yards, she said.

The effort will be concentrated in the Bailey, Red Cedar and Oakwood neighborhoods.
“We anticipate (the) Notre Dame game will have a lot of people out on the streets, and the potential for a messy neighborhood is a lot higher,” Seifert said.

The event is aimed at bringing together students and long-term residents, she said. Neighborhoods also tend to look disheveled on the days following big football games, Seifert said.

“It’s a really good chance at the beginning of the year for students to meet their neighbors they haven’t met yet,” she said. “It makes the community look nice, and it’s also people getting to know one another.”

Sometimes students suffer from a bad reputation with East Lansing residents, CRC intern Thomas Bunting said. Cleaning up after games gives students a better name in the community, he said.

“The idea behind it is not all students are out throwing their stuff everywhere and partying and not cleaning up,” said Bunting, who is a political theory and constitutional democracy senior. “Some students do care about the community and it’s something they want to be a part of.”

Students and residents also can use the opportunity to start a dialogue with each other if they have unresolved issues, he said.

“The students get to talk to someone who is not the police or anything, who will try help them out,” Bunting said.

Opening lines of communication is never a bad thing, said Alex Rogers, a CRC intern and economics junior.

“It doesn’t hurt to bring people together,” he said.

“It builds camaraderie. We want to bring students and we want to bring long-term residents together, so they understand who’s who and why they’re here and what each of their goals are.”