On January 20, 2014, Stockton held a Martin Luther King Junior Day of Service at the main campus in Galloway and at many of Stockton’s satellite locations.  Tons of people showed up to help the community with projects varying from a campus clean up to preparing meals for those in need.

After getting signed in and listening to the opening remarks and brief speeches, I went with my fellow members of Water Watch and participated in a campus clean up.  Several other people volunteered to help and we all went off in groups of about four and wandered the campus picking up every piece of trash, including recyclables, and putting them in our trash/recyclable bags.  It seemed like the only things we picked up were cigarette butts, there were way too many to count, and wrappers.

The group I was working with ended up cleaning trash all over the campus.  We started outside of D wing and walked around the smoking gazeboes, down the light walk way, all around the upperclassman dorms, and back to the main campus down the walk way without the lights.  We found everything under the sun in terms of trash.  Like I said before, there were tons of cigarette butts!  However, we also found beer cans, plastic, glass, rotten fruit, and cardboard just to name a few.

After we made our rounds about the campus, we sat down to have some lunch and a reflection session.  Each group shared what they had picked up and where they had gone to clean.  Everyone found a ton of cigarette butts and wrappers while cleaning up and we all felt like we had accomplished a lot and helped make our campus greener.

This Day of Service was much more organized than the last Day of Service that I attended and it wasn’t nearly as confusing.  The lines were still long to wait to sign in and it was slightly crazy trying to find the table that I wanted to spend my day with, but knowing what groups would be at what location and exactly what they would be doing before going into the event room was a huge relief!  It made the process a lot less crazy and a lot more fun.  Overall, it was a really great experience.