(From left to right) Human resource management sophomore Nicole Kunecki, nutritional sciences junior Jade Woodruff, elementary education sophomore Beth Henley, and physiology junior Amber Johnson paint a log April 25, 2015, at Lake Lansing Park South, 1621 Pike St. in Haslett. All four girls are members of Sigma Kappa sorority and were cleaning up the park by painting, picking up garbage, and shoveling wood chips along with other members of the Greek community. Allyson Telgenhof/The State News.
Pulling up weeds and painting picnic tables isn’t how an ordinary college student spends their Saturday. But this weekend, six fraternities and sororities took a few hours out of their day to help restore the Lake Lansing parks.
Nutritional science junior Jade Woodruff said cleaning the park makes it a safer environment for families to spend their time.
“I feel like more people will come and enjoy the park if it looks nicer,” Woodruff said.
The park is a place where Woodruff and her friends sometimes come to goof off, so she said it was cool to come back and actively contribute to it.
“It makes me want to come back more and just enjoy it,” Woodruff said. “I’ve put effort into it so I want to enjoy what I’ve done.”
She said working on the park makes her feel good about herself, and she thinks community service as a whole is important.
“Able bodies should always do community service for those who can’t...giving back to the community is something everyone our age should do,” Woodruff said.
Human resource management sophomore Nicole Kunecki said she feels good about having all gotten together and taken the time to help out.
“If everyone just took two hours out of their day once a weekend then a lot of things could be accomplished,” Kunecki said.
She said putting forth the effort and manual labor towards the park makes her appreciate it more.
When someone drives by and sees new paint, they often don’t give it a second thought, but now she can look at the clean park and know that she contributed to it.
“I think it’s really important because for our sorority one of the standards is service,” Kunecki said, “ so we should live up to that.”
Accounting sophomore Jeffrey Werner said it’s nice to give back to the community.
“It feels good because I did a lot of volunteer work in high school too, so it’s nice to keep that going through this," Werner said.
He said it’s similar to his fraternity’s house in that they work together to keep it clean, and take pride in it’s cleanliness because they put the effort towards it.
Wernerlo sees community service as something everyone should be take part in.
“It’s everyone’s duty,” Wernerlo said, “if you’re going to be part of the community you should give back to it also.”
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