On the last weekend of September, Keene State College organizations gathered up and down the streets of Keene in efforts to clean up trash.
The Adopt-a-Street program is a joint program between the Office of Student and Community Relations and the City of Keene.
“We work very closely with off-campus students, landlords who rent to off-campus students, the neighbors that live in the surrounding community, the permanent residents, we all sort of work together,” Coordinator of Student and Community Relations, Allison Riley, said. Riley had also collaborated with the Building a Spirit of Place program to dedicate particular streets to the organization that worked on it by putting up a street sign with the name of the organization.
Contributed Photo: Allison Riley and Josh Gorman work together to plan the Adopt-a-Street program. Riley and Gorman are posing by a street sign dedicated to a participating organization.
“What we’ve essentially done is for any of the students involved, we put their name in the middle,” Riley said. “A lot of times, the impact that is made by college students in the neighborhood is not a positive one,” Riley explained. “It’s noise complaints that are made, incidents that are involving parties, “ she said.
Riley said that when she got together with the people of Keene, the goal was to find things that “we could do in the neighborhood that would be a positive community service experience that would enhance the neighborhoods and one way to do that is by doing a trash pick-up,” she said. “It’s not a brand new idea, but it’s not something that had not been done here particularly with college students,” Riley said. Riley explained that she now has 16 groups that are signed up and committed to the program for this year. One of those groups is the fraternity Tau Kappa Epsilon. Senior Ben Dovidio, a member of TKE, participated in last weekend’s trash pick-up.
“We were assigned three streets. We were assigned Davis Street, Emerald Street and Wilcox Terrace,” he said. Dovidio and his group used a truck to travel up and down the streets. He said they collected about ten bags of trash, and that “most of what we get is cups and cigarette butts, not a lot of high volume trash.” Riley added that the program has really developed in terms of the participating organizations. “They’ve really blossomed into many different kinds of groups,” she said. “There are some honor societies, there’s some fraternities and sororities, and there’s athletic groups, [and] student organizations that just have the mission of a healthy community or enhancing the community as part of what their goals are for this year.”
“It’s a really simple event, a simple way to give back to the community. It’s really fun,” Dovidio added.
Josh Gorman, a housing inspector for the city of Keene, has facilitated and coordinated the production in place of the street signs so the groups can get credit for the work. He has worked closely with Riley in the planning for the Adopt-a-Street program.
Contributed Photo: Delta Phi Epsilon poses while trash picking.
“In effort to ramp up relations between college and city we were introduced, and as a result we began working together towards solutions to some of the problems created by some of the off-campus students. Typically, prior to Allison and myself working together, there was very little cooperation between the college and the city. It’s a fairly important relationship to have in order to accomplish certain goals,” Gorman said of the program.
Kristen Guillette, junior and Kappa Beta Gamma member, also participated in the trash pick-up along with other members of her sorority. “We did Franklin and Spring Street. And it really doesn’t take long at all,” she said, “It’s just like a mini green-up day.”
“It’s really fun. Keene State students do tend to trash the streets of Keene, so it’s only right that we go back out and pick up our mess,” she added.
Contributed Photo: Participating KSC organizations collect trash which is then picked up and brought to a transfer station.
“For anyone who wants to get involved whether you’re in Greek Life or not, it’s a great way to work as a team and be more active in the community,” Dovidio said. “Most students really want do the right thing, it’s just a matter of knowing what that is,” Gorman said. “[It] develops a sense of awareness for the students in terms of sense of community and pride, so that they may think twice before they litter next time,” he continued. “I think it has two positive effects,” Gorman said. “One, of course, is that there is a very common perception of college students by the citizen that they’re this rowdy, unwilling bunch of us that don’t really care about anything, that only care about partying. And that is not the case at all.”
Gorman said that this program not only gives the community of Keene a more positive image of KSC students, but also “teaches these groups the value in community. When you have pride in the area that you live in, positive things tend to happen, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy.”
Kenzie Travers can be contacted at mtravers@keene-equinox.com