Students in the Greek Go Green club took the initiative to help keep Iowa State beautiful by organizing a cleanup of Lake LaVerne.

The relatively new club, founded just last year, adopted Lake LaVerne and does a cleanup of it once every semester. Sunday from 2 to 3 p.m., 65 students gathered at Lake LaVerne to help Greeks Go Green pick up all the trash surrounding the lake.

The event was not limited to member of Greeks Go Green, or greek students. Everyone was encouraged to join in helping with the cleanup. Greeks Go Green were expecting around 50 people to attend, but their expectations were exceeded.

Some may have noticed the layer of green residue on the surface of Lake LaVerne this year; while Iowa State is having a crew to come in and clean that portion of the lake, that is not the purpose of the Greeks Go Green clean up. Theirs was limited to outside of the lake and not the actual water.

Corrine Villim, president of Greeks Go Green, said the majority of the trash that students find around the lake are cigarette butts. Since the perimeter of the lake is near the edge of campus, it’s a popular spot for students to go smoke.

Villim said that helping out with the clean-up has helped her realize how bad littering is, and she said that she will never do it again.

“When I’m there and I’m cleaning this up, I’m like ‘I’m never going to litter again’ because it’s horrible, and especially because we have such a beautiful campus,” Villim said. “It’s important to have awareness that your actions definitely have repercussions.”

Along with the Lake LaVerne clean-up, Greek Go Green also does other volunteering events and activities around the university.

Eventually, the club plans to have a contest among all the fraternities and sororities to see who can save the most energy in the house over a period of time. The winning house would be rewarded with a retrofitting of some sort in the house. They hope that a contest like this would help to broaden the reach of the club and get more greeks interested in it, Villim said.

Weston Navratil, team leader for the Lake LaVerne clean-up project, volunteered in his first ever clean-up of the lake and said he believes that it is an important event to maintain the beauty of our campus.

“Everyone volunteering, helping out and doing their part really helps to keep our campus looking nice,” Navratil said.