Consternation was high last week when Confederation Heights South Park was vandalized with graffiti.
A few of the obscene messages, spray painted on the splash pad and playground, disparaged Thorold Secondary School (TSS) and its teachers.
When students at the school heard what happened, they immediately sprung into action.
“Our students just really wanted to make the park beautiful again,” says the school’s principal, Janice Sargeant, in an interview with ThoroldToday. “It’s sad for the families that go there to see that negativity. They just wanted to clean it right up.”
So on Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m., a handful of students met up at the park and got to work.
“We started with a group and then more kids just kept showing up as the morning went on,” says Sargeant. “Some of the little boys who live in the community, they came out and they were helping. It just became this little community event.”
Cleaning up the remnants of the graffiti felt personal to a lot of students.
“We don’t know who that was but that certainly doesn’t represent how the majority of students feel about their school,” says Sargeant. “They have tremendous pride in being a Thorold Secondary student and they love our teachers.”
Sargeant says that the park clean-up plays into the values taught at Thorold Secondary School.
“We create a caring culture, we’re respectful and we’re kind,” she says. “We have so many kids doing really wonderful things in the community. Our students really wanted to let the community know that this is what TSS is all about: going out there and doing the right thing.”
