Author: Damian Mendieta
It’s hard to ignore the myriad sights, sounds and smells of the Tiger Cooler, from the high-definition TV usually set to ESPN, to the comfortable couches, to the near-constant smell of French fries. And yet, there is much that does get ignored. Napkins and oily cheeseburger cartons get left behind. Half-opened ketchup packets stay on tabletops long after students pick up and go. There’s a coffee table in front of the TV that’s perpetually filthy with student messes. By leaving behind our used napkins, bottles and unfinished trays of food, we are disrespecting the cleaning staff. The men and women who empty our trash cans and who scrub the toilet seats of the bathrooms we puke in on Saturday nights deserve better. It’s their job to clean the college facilities – not to clean up after students who know better but still choose to lazily leave the work for others.
Perhaps most students do not understand what being part of the cleaning staff means. It’s understandable; after all, nobody came to Occidental with the idea that he or she would perform janitorial duties. But does that mean that students, legally and effectively adults, don’t hold on to the responsibility to dispose of their garbage properly or to remember to flush? How many would behave like this at home? With their irresponsibility, not only are students being rude to the staff, but they also do not pay adequate courtesy to their peers. No one should dread walking into a restroom Sunday morning in fear of the mess left behind on Saturday night.
The most important means to ensure that students behave better is to make them aware of the consequences of their actions. Simply knowing that the minimum effort is not enough goes a long way to making the work of our custodial staff vastly easier. For example, the rubbish shoots in the dorms lead to a small trash can – not a dumpster as most believe – and the cleaning staff must collect the refuse whether it’s neatly bagged or strewn across the floor out of our sight. All it takes for a student to help the custodians is to tie up a trash bag before disposing of it. If we don’t, the cleaning staff faces the task of digging through rotten food, used personal hygiene products and even freshly used condoms.
It is also important to realize that of all Occidental employees, the cleaning staff are the ones that understand best what our daily lives are like. They are the ones who find the discarded liquor cans and bottles on Saturday and Sunday mornings. They are the ones who see how well we sort our recyclables in the bright blue bins. They are the ones who see how even students with distinguished academic backgrounds cannot seem to properly flush their excrement. They make sure our floors are mopped or vacuumed. They clean up after the men who don’t bother to throw away their hair after shaving. They take hair out of the women’s shower drains. Imagine for just a moment the image a 20-year-old projects when failing to look after the most basic requirements of cleanliness.
Our dorms can be cleaner – but not by making the cleaning staff work more. Each student can create an environment with fewer foul sights and smells merely by behaving with a little more responsibility. If students believe their actions only affect themselves, they should think otherwise. By failing to dispose properly of bodily fluids, be they blood or human waste, a students also poses a hazardous risk for others who enter the building. Members of our community have reported seeing blood on their restroom floors and human waste on their toilet seats, both of which are health hazards. Although students may have accidents in the restrooms, it is fundamental that they clean up after themselves to ensure the safety of the students that will use the restrooms next and the cleaning staff that will eventually have to deal with it.
The individuals cleaning our filth are not our maids or servants. They are human beings that deserve respect for making our dorms shine and sparkle as hygienic places to live. Maybe it was the norm to trash the bathrooms and facilities in our high schools, but here it must not be.
We live in dorms as guests. As temporary inhabitants of the residence halls it is our duty to respect the people that clean them and to show consideration for our fellow peers living with us. We are not in high school anymore, where we could count on our parents to clean up after us. You no longer have a doting parent to pick up your trash. So please, do your part and clean up your mess.
Damian Mendieta is an undeclared first-year. He can be reached at mendieta@oxy.edu.
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