“This was a great way for the greek community to visibly help the campus,” said Michael Champagne, a senior in animal ecology.

Champagne was talking about Veishea Service Day/Stash the Trash which was this past Saturday. The Veishea Committee every year hosts this event as a way to beautify Ames and the surrounding community.

Veishea Service Day is split up into many activities, with Stash the Trash being the main event.

Katy Cran, assistant director of Greek Affairs, said that it also tends to be a predominantly greek event, with a large portion of the participants being in a chapter on campus.

“The greek community always actively participates in Veishea service day,” Cran said.

Stash the Trash participants had the choice between a morning or afternoon shift from 8 to 11 a.m. or 1 to 4 p.m. Each greek chapter was given its own section of campus to clean. The chapter would spend a couple hours picking up litter and some larger pieces of trash.

This event is tied directly into Greek Week, which began Sunday. According to the Greek Affairs website, Greek Week is meant to “unite the greek community under a common bond of fraternal friendship.”

Greek Week points are awarded for Veishea Service Day, which serves as an incentive to promote a large amount of participation from within the Greek Community. Every chapter is asked to have the majority of their members participate.

This year the Veishea committee paired up with myLocal Cooperative, which is a group of 80 businesses that came together to offer hero rewards to the Stash the Trash participants. Anyone who participated on the day of the event would receive merits, which could be redeemed at the Cooperatives website. The merits can be used to get deals from the participating restaurants and businesses which took part in Stash the Trash.

“I personally enjoyed the experience this year at Veishea Service Day,” said Francesco Coco, junior in history. “The weather was wonderful, and it felt great to go outside and help clean up the university before the Greek Week and Veishea celebrations.

Coco also said it was good for people to take pride in the community and believed everyone should be more than willing to help keep it clean.