Event officials estimate more than 800 ASU students were in attendance Saturday morning to participate in the 12th annual Devils in Disguise community outreach event spanning Tempe and Phoenix.
The students arrived on the Tempe campus to register before boarding 17 buses to 25 site locations including the Sojourner Center, the Desert Arboretum Park and the Arizona Food Bank.
The volunteers also collected fruit on campus, removed graffiti and picked up trash at several parks including Tempe’s Rotary Park.
ASU Community Service Coalition intern Emily Reynolds helped organize the event and believes it serves the community and improves the image of ASU.
“Devils in Disguise is the largest student organized day of service,” Reynolds said. “It gets students interacting with the community, and it helps to develop an atmosphere of excitement, especially when you realize the huge impact that a group of students can have in one day.”
The buses returned to the Tempe campus around 1 p.m. to a party for the volunteers, organized by the ASU Community Service Coalition.
Event officials provided an inflatable obstacle course, pizza and a surprise appearance by Sparky using funds appropriated by the Undergraduate Student Government.
Secondary education sophomore Kevin Salazar picked fruit alongside his brothers from the Tau Psi Omega Fraternity.
Tau Psi Omega founded Devils in Disguise before it was adopted into a campus-wide event in 2000.
“As a community-based fraternity, we participate in this and other clean-up events every year,” Salazar said.
In previous years, the number of students participating in the events stabilized at around 500 students.
Efforts to enlarge that number, such as posting a promotional billboard on Palm Walk and increasing the distribution have paid off.
Community Service Coalition Vice Chair Holly Vins said the change in advertising increased number of participants.
“We don’t have an exact number yet, but I had ordered 800 Devils in Disguise shirts for today’s participants and now they are all gone,” Vins said. “Based on that, we know we have attracted an unprecedented number of students.”
Communications freshman Hayley Burns took part in Devils in Disguise by picking fruit on campus along with her Alpha Phi sorority sisters.
“Doing events to help the community illustrates student leadership and the fact that hundreds of us got up extra early to participate on a Saturday morning shows a lot of selflessness,” Burns said.
Students such as business marketing freshman Nikki Baron from Alpha Phi suggested students who are active in the community tend to be people of higher moral fiber.
“Helping the community isn’t just about being a nice person,” Burns said. “The students who showed up today illustrated qualities of leadership and selflessness.”
Reach the reporter at mjgordo1@asu.edu
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