Students should reasses their campus manners

Every morning I wake up on to an almost perfect view of campus. By 7 a.m., the sun is already up but the sky is still slightly colored by sunrise which shines down on the elegant Georgian architecture, the intricate brick pathways zigzagging across the greenest patches of grass, and my personal favorite: acres of litter. 

From my bedroom window I can see solo cups, condoms, gum and cardboard boxes often within several feet of the dumpsters surrounding my dorm. To me this somehow takes away from the overall aesthetic elements of a campus that has long been known for its beauty. 

In pictures, on college magazines and on the school website, campus looks great. It looks serene and well kept, but when walking to class in the morning, especially Monday mornings, there is a completely different feel.

I am very happy that my fellow classmates are going out and having a good time. I too like to enjoy myself on the weekends, but usually that does not involve vomiting or urinating all over the meticulously crafted brick walkways. Not only is that a major party foul, it is just simply foul. 

Yet the act of puking and urinating on campus walkways and the Green is met with a rather apathetic attitude. On one hand, I think it is kind that as a campus we are not overly judgmental, but on the other hand I think we need to re-evaluate the seriousness of treating the campus like a toilet. 

For me it is not about the accidents, but rather the callous attitude surrounding them. People tell stories about urinating and vomiting on campus with the same level of pride as old war veterans. This is not something that should fill these people with pride. Nor should we giggle about the condoms that now litter parts of Laird Campus. I am glad that students are taking the Wellspring approach and practicing safe sex, but when you are leaving something containing your body fluids all over campus for other students to step on, I have to wonder if that really qualifies as being safe. 

These actions need to be met with a level of shame instead of insensitive bemusement, or in some instances even an insurmountable pride. Students that attend this school need to be accomplished and intelligent. Therefore we all have things we could boast about that do not involve trashing campus, and in fact we should not be talking about trashing campus at all. In my opinion, as a student body we are highly above behaving in that manner. 

We are above refusing to walk that extra foot to a trash receptacle to spit out the gum that now patterns every walkway on campus and several unfortunate pairs of shoes. We are above vomiting and urinating all over campus and far above leaving used contraception on walkways and green surrounding campus.

Our school invests a lot in making campus aesthetically pleasing and keeping campus clean but it is not the university’s job to make sure we are old enough to know that urine belongs in the toilet, and trash in a dumpster.