The Observer, February 29, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 19
Case students should trash messy ways
To the Editor:
It's Friday night, about 8:30, and I just got back from some work for my senior project in the Nord computer lab. Just a few minutes earlier, as I walked out of the lab and down the staircase into the lobby, I noticed something a bit disturbing. From the middle of the staircase, I could see all the tables and couches where both students and faculty relax, converse, and work. As I looked around, I was ashamed to see that every table or couch had some amount of trash both on it and around it. Even more appalling was the fact that this trash was not limited to paper and wrappers: on one table, there was a used banana peel, half crushed into the surface of the table, smearing it across the tabletop; on another, an empty yogurt cup with its respective spoon, dried yogurt sticking the spoon to the table; on a chair, a bagel wrapper dripping its contents onto the carpet below; and numerous empty bottles sat wherever they were last used. Intrigued, I looked around further. Were there no trashcans to be found? No, I could see a trash can within 15 feet of any point in the lobby. Perhaps they were overflowing? No, no can was more than half full. The only remaining explanation was that my fellow students and faculty had simply left their trash there out of blatant disregard and disrespect for both the property that is not theirs and the staff whose job it is to maintain that property.
What I don't understand is what makes people think that they have the right to act in such a manner. Do they assume that because we have a cleaning staff that they shouldn't be responsible for walking to a trashcan? Does this attitude imply that some people think that they're somehow above those who make their living through manual labor? I put it to you that the majority of the people who frequent the Nord lobby don't have an appreciation for the amount of work put in by manual laborers. Perhaps those people might change their actions if they did. Regardless, it remains that such behavior is disrespectful, arrogant, lazy, but most of all, easily avoidable. In college, everyone is an adult. It's time we all started acting like it.
Alex Cooke
Undergraduate student
