Jason Klaiber
Staff Writer
The Franciscan Center for Social Concern will conduct its first-ever garage sale for old furniture items over the span of two days.
The event will be hosted in the garages behind Doyle Hall from noon to 6 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 14, and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 15. The first day is reserved for faculty, staff and students at St. Bonaventure, while the second day is meant for members of the Olean and Allegany communities who aren’t necessarily affiliated with the university.
This event is in observance of National Recycling Week as well as the history of St. Francis, who was the patron saint of the environment.
Members of the on-campus club Tread Lightly, which focuses on environmental proactivity, as well as staff and faculty volunteers, will assist in running the event.
Any funds made from the event will have the ability to provide students with scholarship money for service trips.
Sr. Suzanne Kush, C.S.S.F., director of the Franciscan Center for Social Concern, said the two-day garage sale exhibits how the same things that can be useful for some individuals are tossed aside and seen as dispensable by others.
“(The garage sale) keeps items out of the landfill, and it provides an opportunity for individuals who have fewer resources to get items that they could possibly use,” Kush said. “Reuse promotes a concern for our environment, our land, and help for other people.”
St. Bonaventure has been named a Tree Campus USA by the Arbor Day Foundation four consecutive years, which is a testament to the university’s environmental stewardship. Bonaventure has steered an ecologically conscious approach through programs such as Recyclemania, a national college competition that extends through February and March every year and raises recycling awareness.
The university, particularly an offshoot of the sustainability committee called Land Use, has strived to build an understanding of the natural environment surrounding the campus by instituting tree identification signs and placing Quick Response (QR) codes on trees along the Allegheny River Trail.
Despite these initiatives Kush claims there still needs to be a more pronounced effort to recycle on campus.
“I don’t think we do well enough on this campus for recycling even though we have multiple containers that are marked,” Kush said. “Sometimes I think we take the easy way out. But it’s very easy to recycle on this campus. We can really recycle a great deal. It’s just a matter of caring and being careful where we place what we’re throwing out.”
