Farris Hall resident assistants hosted a Martin Luther King Jr. Day campus cleanup day to encourage community service at UCA.
Junior Cade Richesin, a resident assistant at Farris Hall, said the event was held on MLK Day to promote a sense of community.
“RC Milan kinda helped me organize most of it and write the initial plan. His idea to do it on MLK Day was to provide community involvement and kind of support and celebrate what MLK stood for with community and standing together,” Richesin said.
Farris Hall resident coordinator Milan Novaković said that events like this are essential to campus life.
“I think it is really important to engage students in service and do something that directly impacts the community they live in, and for our residential students, that is the community on campus,” Novaković said.
Novaković also said that participating in events like the cleanup are not only beneficial to the campus, but also to the students.
“When we do service, especially things that help clean up campus, it improves our mental health and gets people engaged together,” Novaković said.
Richesin said they chose to host a cleanup to inform students about keeping a healthier campus.
“We decided to do a campus cleanup mostly to go ahead and let our residents know we do have an option for recycling in the building and on campus. It is an important aspect of campus life that not a lot of people put a lot of effort into, so it’s something we wanted to highlight in this event,” Richesin said.
Before picking up the campus, Richesin said which items were recyclable, and which items were trash.
Resident assistant Aiden Barber holds a trash bag open. In addition to bagging trash, the cleanup also focused on recycling education.
“When we pick up this trash, and we do our recycling, it is important to use separate bags,” Richesin said. “For example: aluminum and plastic do not go together.”
Richesin said he reached out to Green Bear Coalition for information on recycling at UCA.
“The physical plant recycles a lot of things like motor oil and fluorescent bulbs because they have a lot of mercury in them,” Richesin said.
The event started in the courtyard between Farris and New Hall. Participants went down Farris Road, turned onto Bruce street and circled back to Farris Hall.
They picked up various items alongside the roads such as plastic bottles, aluminum cans, paper and cigarette butts.
Resident assistants from Farris Hall bag trash on Farris Road. The group cleaned up plastic, cigarette butts and cans among other things.
Richesin also spoke about how cleaning up affects the environment around campus.
“We clean up plastics and things so they don’t go into the drainages like Tucker Creek, which is pretty close to campus,” Richesin said. “We’re keeping it out of some of the waterways, and away from some of our wildlife surrounding campus, which fosters a better ecosystem.”
Senior Aiden Barber is also an RA at Farris Hall and aided in the cleanup.
“All RAs are required to attend all bear plan events, so it is part of my job to be here,” Barber said. “But also, it is one of our better programs because it allows the community to get out and feel like we’re actually doing something for a change.”
He said that the RAs strive to bring their residents together when making bear plans.
“Most of our programs, we try to have some sort of educational or involvement aspect to them. So, we try to make sure our residents are engaged or drive a community bond,” Barber said.
