Hailee Tocco

Honors Service-Learning

Professor Rosner

20 October 2014

Attending Stockton’s biannual Day of Service opened my eyes to the variety of on-campus organizations and community partners of Stockton College. Arriving at eight o’clock in the morning I was greeted at check-in with a liability release form and a shirt. Proceeding downstairs offered an array of breakfast foods to energize oneself before beginning a day of rewarding hard work. Upon announcement, all of the volunteers proceeded upstairs to choose their project for the day. My advice to anyone attending in the future would be to arrive at the event room early in order to secure your preference of service project. It was a mad dash to sign up, almost akin to musical chairs. Some of the options included South Jersey Horse Rescue, Active Minds, and Books without Borders

I chose to work with WaterWatch, an on-campus organization who takes on the challenge of cleaning the campus. Our group was tasked with the cleanup of the various parking lots. We donned gloves and were outfitted with garbage bags and set to work. The hot day made the work hard, but our group found ways to lighten the load by playing music and working as a team. Surprisingly, the campus was extremely clean except for the large numbers of cigarette butts that littered the smoking gazebos. All groups finished relatively quickly thanks to our fairly clean campus, and we were provided with lunch in the campus center. Following our nutrition break, we reflected on the ways in which we can better ensure a clean campus and how to make students more inclined to pick up their own cigarette butts.

I was skeptical at first of cleaning up the campus, but it proved to be a fun way to serve our school and it allowed me to interact with students with whom I would normally have very minimal contact. At the end of the day, it was nice to know that the trash we picked up would not be lying around campus the next week. Hopefully our service may convince some other students to think twice before littering.