Last week, LSU departments and student organizations hosted Geaux Big Baton Rouge, LSU’s largest annual service event.
Geaux Big used to be a one-day event; now, it lasts a week. Students can participate in different activities that give back to the Baton Rouge community.
Many events this year were aimed at conserving the environment. For example, on Monday, Campus Sustainability invited volunteers to help sort recyclables.
Makenna Todd, a student worker for campus Sustainability and a wildlife ecology senior, said Tiger Stadium donated expired soda bottles.
Bottles cannot be recycled unless they are empty. The volunteers used crawfish tables and buckets to empty the bottles before putting them in a dumpster where they will be processed and recycled.
Todd said that campus Sustainability does all the sorting and recycling on campus. The department has large dumpsters for different types of plastics, aluminum and metals.
Todd said that sorting recyclables makes the process easier and more efficient, leading to more materials actually getting recycled.
She explained that sorting is especially important for plastics. They have to separate plastic film from other plastics because it can get stuck in the machines.
Criminology senior Noemi Duran helped empty the soda bottles. She said she volunteers often, whether it is for her sorority or on campus at places like the Food Pantry.
She participated in campus Sustainability’s game day cleanup in the fall, so she thought it would be fun to help with this recycling event for Geaux Big.
“People can make an impact, and just one person doing it alone isn’t enough,” Duran said. “As you can see today, we’ve gone through a bunch of packs of Cokes. We can get more work done together than alone.”
On Tuesday, Student Government cleaned purple signs on campus. Gabreyela Gonzalez, coordinator of campus affairs and sustainability and a candidate for Student Body Vice President, said that her sector has focused on beautifying campus this year. She said volunteers tackled signs around the parking garage.
Student Government held a Keep LSU Beautiful cleanup Saturday morning to end the week of service.
Volunteers picked up trash around the campus lakes and Milford Wampold Memorial Park.
Gonzalez, a chemical engineering junior, noticed a significant increase in participation for this Geaux Big event compared to past cleanups, which already had plenty of volunteers.
She said that Student Government is a part of Campus Life, and Campus Life helped with outreach for this event. Gonzalez also said Student Government has made a point to post volunteer events on TigerLink two weeks earlier than they normally would, which she said has boosted student engagement.
All students were invited to participate in Geaux Big, and many student organizations turned out to contribute to the week of service.
Kennedy Wakefield, a pre-nursing sophomore and a member of the National Council of Negro Women, picked up trash around the lakes from 9-11 a.m. She said it was easy for her to participate in Geaux Big.
“Stuff like that is basically what I surround my whole life around, volunteering,” Wakefield said.
She enjoyed building relationships with other students who like volunteering.
Nathali Guevara Reyes is an interdisciplinary studies senior and also Student Government’s assistant coordinator for campus affairs and sustainability. She helped lead the cleanup.
She said Geaux Big has been impactful.
“I’m so excited to be a part of this amazing initiative and to see how it constantly grows every year,” Guevara Reyes said.
