Eighth annual Pittsburgh Project cleans up Oakland

As clouds rolled over the Posvar Hall patio and the temperature dipped below 60 degrees, Adam… As clouds rolled over the Posvar Hall patio and the temperature dipped below 60 degrees, Adam Dei Cas looked up at the sky and prayed that it would not rain.

After months of networking, meeting, organizing and last minute runs to Mellinger’s for bags of ice, members of the Student Volunteer Outreach and Student Government Board were ready to kick off this year’s eighth annual Pittsburgh Project.

On Saturday, the Pittsburgh Project offered individuals and student organizations at Pitt the opportunity to clean up their community by participating in a very hands-on experience – picking up trash.

Even with approximately 400 students participating this year, Oakland had more than its fair share of trash to be picked up.

Many groups came back early with heavy bags of trash, looking to dump their loads and pick up more bags.

Senior Aaron Risden described his experience of cleaning up tons of beer bottles in South Oakland as much different than last year, when he cleaned up wealthy parts of Shadyside.

“We were lucky to find a cigarette butt in one block [last year],” he said.

Weeks before the event, Dei Cas, the program coordinator of SVO, and Michael Jones, an intern at SVO, sat down with Oakland Planning and Development and mapped out a number of areas around the Pitt campus and parts of North and South Oakland that needed serious cleanup. Then, they split the 630 pre-registered students into smaller groups to tackle each site.

Before students left for their work sites, they received free T-shirts, along with free juice, donuts, muffins and Danishes. Then, after a motivational speech by Vice Provost Robert Pack, students were sent out to their sites around 11 a.m.

While some students participated for required community service hours, others seemed genuinely interested in cleaning up their community.

“It’s amazing because you see what you did and you have a lot of fun while doing it,” said junior William Treese. This was his third year participating in the Pittsburgh Project.

Though the streets were typically quiet, some students said they expressed overwhelmingly positive responses from members of the Oakland community.

As Treese cleaned up under the Panther Hollow Bridge, a woman approached his group and asked what they were doing. Treese said that when they told her, she said, “Wow, that’s really amazing. I didn’t realize that college kids still do that type of stuff.”

Senior Melissa Mallon also expressed optimism about the project’s impact on Oakland. While Mallon picked up trash in a neighborhood south of the Boulevard of the Allies, a woman came outside to talk to the volunteers. She said she worked for a community center right in front of where they were working and told them about volunteer opportunities. Then she invited them inside to meet people who frequented the center.

From finding out about the new community center to unexpectedly digging up a garden snake, Mallon said that she gained a lot from the experience.

“I didn’t know there was wildlife in Pittsburgh,” she said with a laugh.

Between 12:30 and 2 p.m., students filtered back to the patio. After dropping their trash off at the incinerator, they listened to the music broadcast into the area, tossed a Frisbee, played cards and hung out until the pizza came.

Despite hours of ripping latex gloves, grass-staining jeans and lugging trash bags around Oakland, the spirits of the students made the patio feel more like a party atmosphere than a work atmosphere.

With the diversity of participants, it very well could have been a party. Members came from various organizations, including Alpha Epsilon Phi, the Arnold Air Society, the Asian Students Alliance, the Biology Club and the Rainbow Alliance.

“It was interesting to see what kinds of groups came out,” senior Autumn Weller said. “You really got to see the diversity of the community.”