While walking her dog up the library steps on Sunday morning, a Georgetown resident looked down to see that she and her dog were wading through broken glass. To her left, underneath the benches on the landing, hundreds of beer cans were cluttered, remnants of a crazy Saturday night. Just as heavy drinking at night causes the inevitable hangover, parties have a similar morning-after effect on our campus. There’s a lot of cleaning up to be done, from beer cans to solo cups to vomit to, sometimes, blood.
Facilities employs one groundsperson to come in on Saturdays and Sundays and clean up from the events of the weekend, and leaves the rest of the cleanup in the hands of the students who host the parties. Just like mom told you: You make a mess, you clean it up. Some students take this responsibility seriously and pick up the mess their guests make. Some, however, leave the trash behind.
Messes left after parties-both on and, more often, off campus-are problematic in more ways than one. First of all, it infuriates residents of West Georgetown and Burleith. As annoying to students as it is, the fact remains that residents have power over our community and can influence a crackdown on our illegal drinking activities. Community boards have a say in University building plans, so angering them means delayed approval for desperately needed building projects. The Performing Arts Center is a prime example of this phenomenon; its construction has been delayed not because the community didn’t want it, but because they could use it as leverage. Fines can also be assessed if the trash is neglected; the Department of Public Works hands out monstrous fines to off-campus residences that leave their garbage out, and the University gives similarly daunting fines to on-campus offenders.
Trash has an impact on our immediate community as well. Handicapped students live in Village A, so beer cans in the walkways make movement for handicapped students difficult. Additionally, the sight and stench of rotting trash doesn’t impress anyone, regardless of who they are; current or prospective students, families or tourists looking at our sometimes-beautiful campus are all disgusted. And, if we want our stringent alcohol policy to be changed, it behooves us to show administrators that we can deal with more lenience.
As it stands now, our campus looks pitiful each and every Saturday and Sunday morning. When facilities can’t keep up with our messes, and the ramifications of simply leaving them can be frightening, it falls to us to clean up after ourselves. It’s time we rose to the challenge.
