What even is litter?
A used tissue is clearly trash, but when does it become litter? Litter is the wrapper of the snack you ate before your test and “forgot” to throw away. Litter is the soda that you tried, didn’t like, and abandoned in the cafeteria. Litter is the half-eaten granola bar that you left in the elevator…for some reason.
It doesn’t matter where you go. In the courtyard, the bathroom or even in the classroom, straw wrappers, juice boxes and lunch trays end up stuck in bushes or the odd mound of trash. They pile up, buried by dirt and sand, waiting for future archaeologists to dig them up as they puzzle over why our society failed. Spoiler alert: it’s your fault.
You’re not special, regardless of what your mommy says, and you are not interesting enough to excuse spreading your filth across campus.
“But why should I care?” you say, unloved and alone. “It doesn’t affect me.” And that is true. It does not affect you. It isn’t your legal responsibility to clean up. But put yourself in the shoes of the people who are forced to find the garbage you hide around campus. Imagine sweeping up tons of trash daily, everywhere you go. Imagine having to scan through every room and under every table and chair for a chip bag or a gum wrapper. Imagine having to bend down to pick up a cascade of paper towels dropped directly in front of a trash can.
Not to mention the biohazards that are the bathrooms and all the disgusting things that take place in them. It is dreadful to even step foot in the bathrooms, let alone clean them. And you force our staff to go through these unspeakable horrors each and every day.
The simple fact is this: our campus looks gross. All of the new benches and tables sit covered by a layer of soda cans and day-old pizza. The nicely trimmed grass in the courtyard is cushioned with wrappers of all different shapes and sizes. Forgotten lunch trays are left shattered and torn.
Spreading trash around campus can only be likened to double dipping a fry in a stranger’s drink. Such an unforgivable offense can only truly be corrected by the truest form of schooling: karma. The next time someone is caught littering, they should be forced to clean up all the trash around campus for the week—two if they complain about it. Only then could they see the error of their ways.
We cheer when the football team scores a touchdown. We celebrate when they win. We sing when the DJ plays a song we all know during a pep rally. We all share a certain togetherness with our peers, a sense of pride in the campus culture we have cultivated. As part of that culture, it is extremely upsetting to see our school covered in this plastic and aluminum graffiti. We, as students and as people, should strive to do better and to improve our campus for good—one juice box at a time.
