LUI: Littering Under the Influence
Ali Harrington
Issue date: 1/31/06 Section: features
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Versus Magazine Online [Image Edition]
Sunday morning: the hall is strewn with paper and the walls are in various states of disarray; there may even be furniture blocking the doorway or adorning the hall. The scene in Branscomb lobby is not any more pleasant. Students stumble to the bathroom, carefully picking their way around paper and furniture without bothering to pick it up. Then, as if by magic, Sunday afternoon the residue from the weekend is all gone; the hall and the lobby are once again clean. The only problem with this scenario is that magic doesn't keep the building clean, Vanderbilt housekeeping employees do.
There is a common misconception fostered here at Vanderbilt: the idea that whatever trash students "happen" to drop or whatever damage is done to the dorms doesn't matter because someone will always come after us to pick it up. Nobody suffers any consequences for tearing posters off the wall in a drunken romp or for tossing Branscomb breakfast all over the floor; these things merely disappear by the next afternoon. However, the damage is at the expense of the housekeeping staff; they are paid to keep the dorms clean, not to have to deal with the leftovers from jaunts of inebriated malefactors.
Every student on campus is more than capable of picking up his or her own garbage and refraining from destroying/creatively arranging school property, yet by choosing not to do so we are blatantly showing contempt for those who do have to pick up after us. So, while pulling message boards and flyers off the wall might seem like a fairly amusing idea at the time, try to remember that somebody is going to have to deal with the mess later. What seems like a really funny idea at 4 o'clock in the morning usually loses its hilarity by noon the next day, and no one has, as of yet, praised the ingenuity of the hallways' weekend ornamentation.
Sunday morning: the hall is strewn with paper and the walls are in various states of disarray; there may even be furniture blocking the doorway or adorning the hall. The scene in Branscomb lobby is not any more pleasant. Students stumble to the bathroom, carefully picking their way around paper and furniture without bothering to pick it up. Then, as if by magic, Sunday afternoon the residue from the weekend is all gone; the hall and the lobby are once again clean. The only problem with this scenario is that magic doesn't keep the building clean, Vanderbilt housekeeping employees do.
There is a common misconception fostered here at Vanderbilt: the idea that whatever trash students "happen" to drop or whatever damage is done to the dorms doesn't matter because someone will always come after us to pick it up. Nobody suffers any consequences for tearing posters off the wall in a drunken romp or for tossing Branscomb breakfast all over the floor; these things merely disappear by the next afternoon. However, the damage is at the expense of the housekeeping staff; they are paid to keep the dorms clean, not to have to deal with the leftovers from jaunts of inebriated malefactors.
Every student on campus is more than capable of picking up his or her own garbage and refraining from destroying/creatively arranging school property, yet by choosing not to do so we are blatantly showing contempt for those who do have to pick up after us. So, while pulling message boards and flyers off the wall might seem like a fairly amusing idea at the time, try to remember that somebody is going to have to deal with the mess later. What seems like a really funny idea at 4 o'clock in the morning usually loses its hilarity by noon the next day, and no one has, as of yet, praised the ingenuity of the hallways' weekend ornamentation.