Cleanup Campaign at Pierce : College Finds Hands-On Solution to Litter Woes

As the students began to take their seats Friday afternoon for an English class at Pierce College, Prof. Richard Follett made an unusual announcement. Rather than telling his students to open their books, Follett sent them outside for 15 minutes to pick up trash.

The order didn’t come as a total surprise. It was cleanup day at the Woodland Hills college, a day that students, teachers and administrators had been awaiting for several months.

Cutbacks Blamed

In the face of cutbacks in the Los Angeles Community College District’s maintenance staff, Pierce students and teachers have begun taking the disposal of trash into their own hands.

“It’s the cigarette butts that give me the most trouble. Have to do them one by one,” business student Barry Rudin said, clutching a handful of stubbed smokes he had picked out of the grass.

Among the hundreds of people who participated in “Campus Cleanup Day” was the president of the college, David Wolf. Shortly after 7 a.m. he was clearing debris from a field near his office. A banjo player and two guitarists in a tractor-drawn wagon played for the participants.

“I really didn’t expect this good a turnout. Everyone’s getting into it,” said Jim Rikel, chairman of the life sciences department and one of the organizers of the event. “I thought it would be like running the American flag up a pole and seeing how many people salute.”

By the end of the day, scores of trash bags were piled high as the volunteer custodians celebrated their efforts with a barbecue.

The appearance of Pierce, widely considered the best-looking campus of the Los Angeles Community College District, has been deteriorating, said Lori Nathanson, one of the students who organized the cleaning. She said more and more custodians and gardeners are being laid off and more community residents are using the school on weekends.

“It’s really been going to the dogs,” Nathanson said. “And, frankly, we’d like to turn that around. It’s a lot nicer when you don’t have to look at garbage on your way to class. And the students are starting to realize that, hey, we’re the ones leaving the stuff, so we should be the ones picking it up.”

Fewer Custodians

Senior custodian Bill Dawson said that, when he joined the maintenance staff at Pierce 22 years ago, he worked with about 60 others on the night shift, when the bulk of the cleaning takes place. These days, Dawson said, he supervises fewer than 20 custodians.

Custodial supervisor Earl Thomas said: “Lately our job is sort of hit and miss and hope nobody notices.”

Rikel said some teen-agers “have made a sport out of knocking over trash cans on the weekends.” A hundred pounds of concrete has been poured in most of the campus’s trash cans to make them more difficult to topple, a strategy that has proven successful.

Pierce is not alone in facing maintenance-staff cuts. Norm Schneider, spokesman for the nine-campus district, said its maintenance staff has been reduced by more than 30% since 1980.

The cleanup campaign will be helped by a nursery, which has agreed to donate about $5,000 worth of trees and shrubs to landscape barren areas of the campus.

Most of the greenery will be used to spruce up the area around the school’s new performing arts center, which has not been landscaped because of a lack of money, Rikel said.