Over the weekend a group of University students and Middletown residents picked up trash in an effort to clean up downtown Middletown. For three hours, volunteers worked to beautify Main Street as part of the seventh annual “Clean Sweep” program.
The program was run by Main Street Middletown, Inc., an organization that was created to help with the revitalization of downtown Middletown, according to Downtown Business District Director Terry Concannon, who organized the clean up.
“Every year [the clean up] is the Saturday closest to Earth Day,” Concannon said. “That is sort of our main inspiration.”
The approximately 90 volunteers who showed up in the morning picked up a variety of litter items, including a large number of cigarette butts and half eaten discarded food. The clean up teams picked up enough trash to fill a trailer and a dumpster, according to Concannon.
“To me the jelly babies were the strangest,” Concannon said. “Of course I walked on them before I saw them.”
In addition, volunteers worked on other projects to clean up the area, such as stripping the information kiosks along Main Street of old paper and staples.
At the end of the clean up, the organizers held a free pizza lunch for the volunteers. Vinci’s Pizza, Enzo’s Pizzeria and Coca-Cola donated the pizzas and drinks. Other businesses on Main Street got involved in the clean up as well. According to Concannon, Destinta Theaters donated 150 free movie tickets, and Smith & Bishel Hardware store offered discount brooms.
“It was a nice day and I guess they had a lot of people out because I saw a lot of people out in from of my store, so I guess it was a success,” said Scott Bishel, the owner of Smith & Bishel Hardware.
Among the volunteers were 11 Psi Upsilon brothers as well as some members of Beta Theta Pi and student mentors with the North End Action Team. According to Concannon, the ages of volunteers ranged from 6 to 60.
“They were terrific,” Concannon said about the fraternity brothers. “I couldn’t have done it without them. First of all they had the muscle power, and they were also enjoying themselves. They were having fun. That made it a good day for everyone.”
The Psi U bothers split into two clean-up teams to cover the area between Court Street and the Middletown Press, according to Tobias Wasser ’06, Vice President of Psi U and a mentor in the North End Action Team program.
“It wasn’t the most enjoyable thing to do but it was definitely rewarding,” Wasser said. We could look at the blocks that we did and could see that it was cleaner.“
Psi U brothers have also participated recently in community service through helping with the international dessert buffet at a nearby senior center and hosting an activities day last semester for children in who are in the North End program.
”I thought it would be a great way to outreach to the community,“ Wasser said about the clean up. ”I think that some or all of the population in the house felt good that they had gone down to make Middletown a better place.“
According to Concannon, nine different organizations were involved in planning the clean up, including the two fraternities, the North End Action Team, Middlesex Hospital, and the University. While Concannon said that the event was a success, she did say that there could have been about six to ten more volunteers because the group was unable to get to two areas around Main Street.
Concannon is also involved in planning the annual Labor Day clean up event for incoming Wesleyan frosh during orientation.
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