A former University of Guelph student, and current resident of the Royal City, received a personal thank you from Mayor Cam Guthrie for helping clean up some of the mess left behind by homecoming revelers.
Katie McLean said she didn’t even take part in any homecoming events on Saturday and was actually out of town for most of the day, but when she and her boyfriend went for a walk Sunday, they decided to take a garbage bag with them.
“There wasn’t an extraordinary mess, but we definitely had no trouble finding any garbage,” she said in a phone interview on Monday.
RELATED: ‘It’s unacceptable’: Guelph’s mayor sounds off on homecoming hooligans
They managed to fill up two bags of garbage during their walk.
“Mostly empties, alcohol containers, a lot of (plastic) solo cups, and a lot of water bottles,” she described.
Mayor Guthrie had posted a video online Sunday and voiced his frustration with the mess that was left behind from the partygoers.
“There’s litter everywhere,” Guthrie said, while asking students to help clean up and to apologize to their neighbours if they were part of the problem on Saturday.
Get breaking National news
Guthrie met with McLean on Monday to thank her for cleaning up.
“I honestly just wanted to really stress to him that it’s not just us, I’m sure there are a ton of other people that went out to clean,” McLean said.
She believes that it was a ‘couple bad apples’ that caused the problems on Saturday, which not only included littering, but also vandalism and property damage, according to Guthrie.
“It’s on everybody, the people who made the mess should be cleaning it up, but I don’t think there is any reason for everyone to be angry and trying to place blame,” McLean said. “It’s all our city and we share it, so there shouldn’t be a divide between the students and the residents who are here all year round.”
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.