The event began at 1 p.m. Sunday when students were split into seven groups, each of which was assigned an area of campus to clean up.
“We reached out to groups across campus,” said Shelby Fletcher, a junior and a member of the CLD member ?relations team.
CLD also had two Target recruiters from the corporate headquarters at the event. The recruiters mingled with volunteers throughout the day.
Fletcher led Group Five through the cleanup.
Among her group members were senior John French and junior Sangning Sun, both members of the Technology Management Club.
French said he and Sun were the only two members that could make it at the beginning but more were on their way.
He said he was attending the event mostly as an outreach opportunity.
“I was free, and I honestly feel like our club should be doing a lot more stuff like this,” French said.
He also said the event was a way for him to give back, and it was simply better for everyone to have a cleaner campus.
“We have to look at it every day,” he said. “We might as well look at something clean.”
Fletcher led the group to their assigned area, handed out white latex gloves and decided which bag would collect garbage and which would hold recycling.
Fletcher said that CLD reaches out to other clubs to make the events they host bigger and better.
“We know a lot of other clubs like to have a ?community service component,” she said.
The students crunched through leaves near Dunn’s Woods, stopping occasionally to pick up trash or take a picture of the foliage.
It was the kind of crunch that only comes from a layer of leaves that reaches past ankles, a couple inches thick.
“It’s behind you,” a student yelled. “No, not that piece of trash, I was talking about the one to your left.”
Fletcher said her role within CLD is planning monthly meetings and helping to lead CLD’s bigger events, such as Sunday’s cleanup.
CLD is part of the Kelley Institute for Social Impact, which was established in 2010.
Last year, the cleanup day drew 150 students.
Fletcher said events like this help to get students out into the community.
“It makes people more aware of what’s going on around them,” she said.
