MAKING THINGS RIGHT

Sydney Academy grads clean up graffiti

Sydney Academy grads clean up graffiti.

About 20 Sydney Academy grads came together Saturday morning to clean up the vandalism that happened after they left painting the trestle.

“When I woke up I was shocked that had happened,” said Marc Gouthro, 17, vicepresident of the Sydney Academy student council.

The graduating class had gathered Friday night to continue the traditional trestle rivalry with Riverview High School in which each school paints its school colours over the other’s. Some police officers stopped by numerous times to make sure they were safe and off the road.

After it was done, most of the grads left, but a few stayed behind and left a trail of graffiti on signs, public property, sidewalks and roads from Riverview to the trestle.

“On behalf of the Sydney Academy grads we are very sorry,” Gouthro said.

“It is so upsetting and unfortunate that a handful of kids can ruin the fun on everyone.”

Julia Macinnis, 17, is another grad who spent her morning cleaning the mess.

“It felt good to clean it up. I was glad that people had the idea to do that,” she said.

“It was the right thing to do.” It took five and a half hours to clean up the graffiti. Not everyone who saw them doing it gave them praise.

“When we were cleaning some people would drive by and curse at us and give us the finger. But for the most part people were pretty supportive,” said Gouthro, who is proud the group got together to do the cleaning.

“We wanted to represent Sydney Academy and show we aren’t all bad.”

Macinnis also hopes this will eliminate any negative feelings people may have about this year’s Sydney Academy graduating class.

“It will show people that we do care about the mess and we hope that people will understand that not everyone is involved in this,” said Macinnis.

“We want to show that the whole grad class isn’t idiots and to show that we care what happened.”