Greeks pick up the streets after weekend’s festivities

Romeo senior Christopher Delidow paused picking up trash from South University Avenue to stare briefly at a wooden chair dangling off of a street sign.

He described it to his partner Grand Blanc junior Harrison Coleman as possibly one of the oddest things he’s ever seen.

It was one of the many items the Greeks encountered as they took to the streets at noon on Sunday to pick up debris between Bellows Street and High Street following the party-filled weekend.

Twenty Greek members participated in the event, coming from four greek organizations: Sigma Tau Gamma, Delta Zeta, Alpha Sigma Tau and Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

The Greek community organizes street cleaning events three times a semester. This semester, the Greek community has cleaned up the streets after Welcome Weekend and State weekend, and will be volunteering again after homecoming weekend.

Macomb senior Jonathan Reusch, a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, who founded the event last January, said he started the event for two reasons.

“I wanted to improve the relationship between the city and the Greeks,” Reusch said. “I also wanted to clean up the streets to create a cleaner environment for Central Michigan.”

Reusch said the effort to paint the Greek community as a more positive organization has been successful.

“The city and the Greeks have definitely had a more positive relationship since we’ve started to focus on helping the community,” he said.

Delidow, a member of Sigma Tau Gamma, said that he also believes that picking up the streets has improved Greeks’ image in the community.

“The City Commissioner Nancy (English) has recently said that she has been very happy with the work we have done,” Delidow said.

Coleman, also a member of Sigma Tau Gamma and a group leader of the event, said the group found several miscellaneous objects — some expected, some not.

“We’ve found broken fifths, leftover food, ping pong balls,” Coleman said. “We even found some underwear in the middle of the road. That was interesting.”

Coleman said he found the community’s negative image of the Greeks to be inaccurate.

“Honestly we’ve picked up more garbage on the streets that (the Greek community) didn’t party on,” Coleman said. “There’s a lot more trash on this street (South University Avenue) than there was on Main Street.”

Courtney Kelzer, a Novi junior, and a member of Delta Zeta, said she felt she was helping the community by volunteering to pick up the streets.

“I think people appreciate that we’re not just partying and trashing this place,” she said. “That’s what a lot of people do, but we’re helping to clean this place up, we’re making this a better place.”