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Halloween In Athens Aftermath: Cleaning Up


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Loud music and outrageous costumes are sights and sounds that are seen each year in Athens during Halloween weekend. Another annual sight is trash all along the streets of the city and on the Ohio University campus.

Students, though, while celebrating were not thinking about the people who have to clean up the streets the next day.

“No, I’m thinking about myself, having a good time, partying it up,” said Ohio University Senior Eavan Martin.

“I thought about, today when I was walking home from work, how clean it was and the thought about how terrible it would be tomorrow. But, I didn’t think about who was cleaning up at all,” said Jessica Driscoll.

Each year the Athens Halloween Block Party draws in an average of 20,000 people to celebrate the holiday. The day after the big party, the Ohio University Grounds Services Department cleans up campus and the city’s grounds and street crew cleans up city streets.

Lisa Kisor is a part of the Ohio University Grounds Department and says in recent years the trash clean-up process has been improving.

“It’s not as bad as it used to be. We have a lot more coordination of a lot of agencies. It makes clean-up a lot easier, a lot faster than it was in the old days,” Kisor said.

The Ohio University Grounds Department crew starts their post-Halloween clean-up efforts at 6 a.m. to make sure the streets and greens on campus are clear before most people are uptown. Kisor says she is used to picking up trash, but Halloween is one of the harder days.

“There’s more, obviously, but it’s what I do,” Kisor said.