As a part of their resident assistant (RA) training, 89 Georgetown RAs took to a local neighborhood trail on Aug. 21 for a service project spanning three miles along the popular foot and bike path known as the Capital Crescent Trail.
The Capital Crescent Trail extends 11 miles from
the Georgetown waterfront to Silver Spring, Md.
Throughout the academic year the university’s RAs are charged with providing community service opportunities for each of their floors. This marks the first year the RA training has combined a community service element in its curriculum.
“In our training, we talked a lot about social justice and community service,” said sophomore
Taryn McDonnell (C’12), a Village A RA. “It’s nice to get outside and put that into action.”
Year-round tens of thousands of hikers, bikers and runners visit the Capital Crescent Trail, an 11-mile pathway that extends from the Georgetown waterfront to Silver Spring, Md.
Coordinators from the Office of Residence Life decided the university’s backyard was just the right place for this year’s first project.
“Starting the year off with serving the local neighborhood and the environment is a good start (to the academic year),” said
Jess Belue Buckley, residence hall director for McCarthy Hall. “It’s one way to enact the values we talk about in training.”
Two RAs cut back tree limbs during the three-hour
community service project on Aug. 21.
Swinging brush cutters and brandishing tree trimmers, the RAs spent three hours in muggy Washington weather attacking the vegetation encroaching on the trail. They fanned out along a stretch of the trail that hugs the Potomac River from Jack’s Boathouse on 35th and K Streets past Fletcher’s Boathouse on Canal Road.
Before the RAs began working, the edges along some parts of the trail were completely covered by brush. By the time the Georgetown group finished, the vegetation had been pruned back to expose a packed limestone buffer along the trail’s edge. The group also felled and stacked dead tree branches and tackled poison ivy infestations.
Bikers whizzing by called out their thanks to the volunteers as pruning created more usable space on the pathway.
The Georgetown group of volunteers, which also included 17 staff members, made up one of the largest groups in recent years to do a service project on the Capital Crescent Trail, said
Danny Filer, volunteer coordinator for the C&O Canal National Historical Park, where parts of the trail are located.
“We can use all the help we can get to clear the trail,” Filer said. “We saw a lot of staff cutbacks in recent years and even though we received some stimulus money to clean up National Park areas, it didn’t come with any extra staff to help with projects like this.”
