Ryan Glavey
Sports Editor
For all the complaints college students get for disturbing the peace, recently some Keene State College athletes set out to help clean up their community.
KSC athletics teamed up with City Housing Inspector Josh Gormon to pick up trash around the city of Keene.
“It accomplished two goals in one,” Gormon said. “ It cleaned trash up throughout the whole city, and more primarily, gave KSC students the opportunity to give back to the community.”
Gormon said for all the criticism KSC students get for being noisy and reckless partiers, when given the chance, they want to do the right thing and are easy to work with.
“Its bigger than picking up trash,” Gormon said. “It’s evidence of the college, student, and city working together in a positive way.”
Gormon said it was his hope that this would be a regular event. He said his idea is to have the various athletic teams alternate picking up the trash around the city twice or so a year.
It was the KSC men’s lacrosse team and the baseball team who volunteered to participate in the clean up.
Gormon said the women’s soccer team signed up to help as well, but could not due to the conflicting time of their Little East Conference championship game.
Gormon said he felt this was a good project, because it was a group of KSC students who freely volunteered their own time to do this.
Gormon said he was working closely with Alison Riley, the KSC off-campus housing liaison to put this project together.
“We were looking for any student body to contribute to the clean-up, John Ratliff, the athletic director, was quick to respond to the request,” Gormon said.
Gormon said Ratliff proposed this to the athletic teams, and it was men’s lacrosse and baseball who stepped up.
There were three main areas of the city that were cleaned up. The athletes split up in to three groups to cover these areas.
One group was charged with picking up Willow St., Grove St., Water St., and Marlboro St.. The second area was around Elliot, Adams, Proctor, and Gates St. Finally, the last group worked on cleaning up the area around Blake, Davis, Wilson St. and Winchester Ct.
Gormon said the goal was to clean up the streets and sidewalks, but they weren’t shy to pick up beer cans and other trash on various lawns as was necessary.
Gormon said he felt this was a perfect opportunity for KSC students, because it was a great way to help make a better community.
Gormon said his ultimate hope for this project was for these students to start to take pride in their community outside of the project, and instead of potentially contributing to its defiling, actively contribute to its betterment.
Ryan Glavey can be contacted at rglavey@gmail.com
