Greek Week Clean-Up Recap
October 2nd, 2009Last week was Greek Week at Washington University, and as part of the garbage collection process for Garbage Wall, the Pulitzer’s Community Engagement Department organized a clean-up/trash collecting competition with the sororities and fraternities there that Friday.
In the following video, Jack Zhou, a fraternity leader who helped arrange the Pulitzer-Greek collaboration, sports his Gordon Matta-Clark bandanna and explains Greek Week and how the Pulitzer clean-up fits in with its other festivities. (Off camera, he also assured me that fraternity life is not like Animal House, which was supposedly based on a screenwriter’s Wash U experiences.)
The clean-up began at the DUC, where Jenny Murphy and Lisa Harper Chang introduced the students to the Pulitzer, Gordon Matta-Clark and Garbage Wall. The students then picked up trash bags and latex gloves and headed to U-City to try to score some points. Lisa, Jenny, Jack, and I rode separately with a truckload of bottled water. After we parked, Jack and I tried to track the foragers down. Here is some of what I observed throughout the afternoon:
(Garbage Wall construction actually took place this week, and I think I saw said Crocs bookending the work’s sides.)
This week, while looking through the clips I took, I couldn’t believe I didn’t get a shot of the winners, but I think the climax of the excursion wasn’t finding out who won the game but a scene of students in their enthusiasm exploring U-City alleyways for trash and helping one another haul it back to campus.
For photos from the Greek Week clean-up, see our Flickr page.
