The Associated Students of New Mexico State University hosted the 15th annual Keep State Great event on Sept. 28 at Preciado Park.  

According to ASNMSU Director of Community Outreach Sonya Shanbhag, the precursor for Homecoming week was brought to NMSU in 2004 and designed as a way for students to pay tribute to their home away from home.   

“Keep State Great is an important even because it brings the students of NMSU together to give back to our campus and keep it clean,” Shanbhag said. “It’s a way for us to appreciate where we are and take care of our home for the duration of our college careers.” 

NMSU graduate David Bedley said Keep State Great is a way to show pride for the university. 

“It’s says that we’re clean and says it’s a good healthy city and school,” Bedley said.  

The planning process, all of which takes two months, includes Shanbhag receiving a list of tasks from different campus departments with locations that require assistance in up-keep. 

 Shanbhag and other ASNMSU members responsible for this program use this list to assign different groups of students to different tasks.  

“It takes a couple months in advance to plan as Community Outreach has to coordinate with various departments on campus to get locations in need of cleaning,” Shanbhag said. “Additionally, there are over 1,000 students who always participate so they are always in contact with those groups to make sure they are registered and know where to go [and] what to do. It’s the largest amount of shirts we order at ASNMSU so deciding promotional items for it begins over the summer.” 

Students who arrived for check in Saturday morning were met with muffins and breakfast provided by ASNMSU. They were also given bags of supplies for their assigned tasks.  

While student organizations participated in order to meet their required on-campus community service hours to remain charted, that didn’t stop others from joining them and getting a free T-shirt.  

Free T-shirts are given to the first 1,000 participants of the event, a quota Shanbhag says, that they have no problem meeting. 

“We always have over 1,000 participants each year,” Shanbhag said. “Last year we broke the record with over 1,600 student participants.”  

The second community project ASNMSU will be hosting takes place in the spring. The Big Event, as it’s known, was brought to NMSU in 2005 as a follow up for Keep State Great.