Kutey Leads Marquette Campus Clean-Up

MILWAUKEE--Walking to work across Marquette's quiet campus over spring break, senior Jamie Kutey on the Marquette's women's soccer team, noticed the bright sunshine and the warm breeze.

She also noticed the trash. Everywhere. Cans, bottles, wrappers, packaging, garbage everywhere. It was in the street, clogging sewer grates, lining the edges of dirty snow mounds, on the sidewalks and grass, tangled in bike racks and heaped against foundations of campus buildings.

What she didn't see was trash cans readily available and wondered where she would toss the trash even if she picked it up herself.

Jamie decided to act.

She wrote an email offering to rally a group of student-athlete volunteers to clean up but wanted feedback on equipment and ideas of where to throw away future trash. After Jamie searched Marquette's online directory and sent it to everyone she could think of: Student Government, the Sustainability Club, Facilities Services, and the Vice President for Planning and Facilities Management.

"I copied President Lovell too because he cares about this campus," Jamie said. "I didn't want to wait a month for Hunger Clean-Up. Campus looked awful right now. I also figured we had trash pickers, gloves and trash bags somewhere, since we have a history of cleaning up campus. I knew if I could figure out how to use those items, we could make this happen immediately."

Her email resonated.

The Marquette Student Government already planned a clean-up, along with the Sustainability Club, seeing the same need. They warmly welcomed Jamie and encouraged her to recruit a big group of student-athletes.

Administrators were impressed her email was an offer for action, immediacy, manpower and energy to attack the problem.

Ten days after her initial email, Jamie led a group of 40 student-athletes to the student government offices where they joined other MU students and set out to collect trash.

"I didn't think that many people would show up, but we all really cared about getting this done," Jamie noted.

Two hours later they had filled multiple huge trash bags and looked back to see they really made a difference.

"I wish we'd taken 'before' and 'after' photos; it was such an improvement!"

All involved agreed that it was a worthwhile effort, but Jamie still thinks campus could use some trash containers in the common areas, outside buildings and called it the 'nudge effect', which is a theory that a gentle suggestion to action creates habit.

Jamie was the nudge that started action, but she notes that she wasn't alone in the result.

"We all live here, and we all are proud of Marquette. This was everyone working together."

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