Mitch Fox/The Hoya Marco Schad (LAW ’03) joins fellow Georgetown students and community residents in cleaning the neighborhood last Saturday morning.

By Deniz Ozdemir

Hoya Staff Writer

Georgetown students and members of the community came together this past Saturday morning with a mission to “Keep Georgetown Beautiful,” the theme of this semester’s Georgetown Clean-Up Day. Thirty-five students, faculty and Georgetown residents worked for several hours to clean up the areas around Prospect and M streets.

The group covered approximately 10 blocks in Georgetown, including the 3300 block of Prospect Street and O Street between 35th and 36th streets. Julie Fultz, coordinator of Off Campus Student Life, said this area is considered the least clean location in the surrounding neighborhood. The volunteers helped pick up trash, rake leaves, pull weeds and fill tree boxes with mulch.

Developing positive relations between members of the community and Georgetown students is one of the main goals of this event, organizers said. “Now if there is a problem after this event, they won’t be afraid to approach each other,” Fultz said. “If we all take a few minutes to properly dispose of our trash it will go a long way to improve community relations between the students and the community.”

The cleanup day is largely beneficial for both students and residents of the neighborhood and is always met by a positive response, Fultz said.

“We started doing this last year and it worked out so well and we got such a good response that we wanted to do more this year,” she said.

Student representatives from GUSA, Knights of Columbus and Alpha Phi Omega as well as Dean Lord, associate dean of students, were present. “We had a small yet enthusiastic group who covered a great deal of territory,” Fultz said. “You really could see the difference we made once the day was over.”

The organizational effort was a joint collaboration between the Georgetown Office of Off-Campus Student Life, the Student Association and The Citizens Association of Georgetown. The Department of Public Works provides the group with tools for the cleanup in addition to removing the trash the volunteers collected at the end of the day.

The Office of Off-Campus Housing is hoping to have four such cleanup days this year, with two per semester. The first one of the semester took place in Burleith on Sept.14, while the dates of the next two have yet to be determined.

Elizabeth Miller, executive director of CAG, was in charge of the community end of the project. By contacting citizens, putting up flyers and going door-to-door, Miller rallied support from the residents of Georgetown.

Local businesses also played a large role in the event by making contributions ranging from donating bulbs to serving food. Georgetown’s Business Improvement District, provided the volunteers with breakfast and Georgetown University Landscape and Waste Management provided a pick-up truck filled with mulch.

“We were all pleased with the West Georgetown clean up on Saturday,” Ray Kukulski, president of the Citizens Association of Georgetown, said in a press release. “It was nice to see students and residents working alongside each other to make Georgetown clean and beautiful for the fall. We hope everybody will continue to pick up litter on the sidewalks in front of their homes and keep the gutters clear of debris.”