By Bobby Winner

This past Thursday, the Thiel community came together to participate in a campus-wide community cleanup day as a part of the NCAA’s Division III Week.

The event consisted of many of Thiel’s athletes coming together to make the campus look more beautiful as well as prepare the campus for spring.  This event was considered a success due in part to the efforts of Thiel’s athletes, who managed to cleanup almost of the trash around campus.  This event will return for the NCAA’s next Division III Week, but that doesn’t mean we all can’t all do our part throughout the year.

“It’s always crucial to make sure our lovely campus is clean, and I’m happy to help in any way I can,” said senior thrower on Thiel’s track team, Aaron Hansen.  “Pollution is always bad for the environment, whether it’s on a large or small scale, and I, along with most of the students here try to keep the campus as clean as possible.  Thiel has a beautiful campus and it would be a shame to see it covered in trash.  A clean campus is a happy campus.  It’s great to help out however I can, and I think everyone else would agree that we should do more to keep the campus, as well as the rest of Greenville clean, that’s why we do events like this and Spring Into Action later on this semester.”

Spring Into Action is an event done in the spring when it is warm out and the Thiel students come out to clean various parts of Greenville.  There are generally many different jobs for everyone to do, varying from picking up trash to shoveling mulch, and this event does a great service to the town of Greenville.

“It is sad to see how much pollution is out there, and the fact that people are still destroying the environment boggles my mind,” says junior golfer Matt Babeji.  “Being an environmental science major and seeing how pollution and garbage damages the environment really grinds my gears, which is why I will always be happy to participate in these cleanup days.  An event like this, despite being a smaller scale event, still can help restore the campus and surrounding area to its beautiful state, this is a nice campus and it is nice to see it stay that way.  Even small-scale pollution, like pieces of garbage can be pretty detrimental to the ecosystem of the area, especially with all of the different wildlife on campus.”

“There might be something that is toxic to squirrels in our trash that’s littered, and that toxicity can rise right up the food chain.  So, it’s cool to see this many people taking the time out of their busy days to help clean the campus and make it look great for us, as well as potential new students. A clean campus can make a great first impression on an incoming student, I know it did for me,” Babegi said.