NORTHRIDGE >> Mark Trejo swept a plastic spoon onto a short-handled shovel. Greg McKay scooped it into a large plastic bag. And Jacqueline Syers hoisted it and her sack across an ever hotter Cal State Northridge campus and beyond.
Thus began the heavy lifting on Saturday during an inaugural CSUN Matadors Day of Service – the university’s first campus and neighborhood cleanup performed by a phalanx of incoming students.
“This story: I think it’s a really momentous event,” said Syers, 19, a creative writing major living in a campus dorm. “We’ve had Matador Nights, Big Show (party) events, negative for (nearby) homes. And now we’re giving back.
“Scooping up trash.”
For the first time since the university was founded in 1958, more than 250 mostly freshmen students rose early Saturday a week after beginning of Fall semester for a morning of Matadors volunteer service.
• Video: CSUN Acasola singers perform Saturday
The event, hatched by the Matador Involvement Center and hosted by its Unified We Serve volunteer program, drew 250 mostly incoming freshmen in what officials hope will become a campus tradition of opening week shovels, brooms, rakes and bags.
It would be a day of burnishing their new campus and surrounding neighborhoods working side by side with officials from Los Angeles Council District 12, Northridge Sparkle, three neighborhood councils and the Northridge Chamber of Commerce.
“This is a great day,” said Francesca Vega, CSUN director of community and government relations. “It’s valuable for the students to be engaged with their community, and build relationships with CSUN and the surrounding neighborhoods.”
The day began and ended on Bayramian Lawn, where students and staff gathered beneath stately magnolias in white, green and pink Matadors Day of Service T-shirts for a bagel-fortified rally, accompanied by a cadence by CSUN Taiko Ensemble and an a capella chorus by CSUN Acasola.
“We are going to go out into the community and we are going to make a difference,” declared Vicki Allen, assistant director of the involvement center, beneath an arch of red, white and black Matador balloons.
“It’s events like this – and I graduated from CSUN – that led me to a life of community service,” said John Lee, chief of staff for Councilman Mitch Englander. “I want to thank CSUN for leading me down that path.”
Students then marched over to tripods of newly stacked arms, to collect shovels, rakes and brooms for campus and neighborhood work details.
“We’re all here. We want to help,” said Trejo, 18, of Los Angeles, a freshman majoring in psychology. “It makes us feel better to give back to the community.”
“Ready to clean the streets,” declared Jakub Ciesla, 21, a 6-foot-6 senior varsity volleyball player majoring in civil engineering who would head off into a neighborhood east of Zelzah Avenue. “Heavy duty. Gonna look for droppings, I don’t know. I feel good.”
For the next two hours, the quiet campus and its surrounding streets were filled with the sound of swishing brooms, scratching rakes and the scraping of steel shovels. The day ended with a picnic lunch.
And a maze of sidewalks, paths, curbs, commons, parkways and the Associated Students Children’s Center garden had been scoured and weeded to perfection.
“I’m a perfectionist,” said Lara Rosenberg, 18, whose nearby freshman dorm was asked to volunteer, as she swept a walkway in front of the Oviatt Library. “Got get every last leaf.
“Thing is, the campus is pretty well maintained, so we have to work extra hard.”