Almost all students on campus have had the unpleasant experience of encountering human bodily fluids in unexpected places, and even, at times, having to clean up after other students. Whether it be urine on WestCo staircases when a rave is in full force in the WestCo Cafe (which actually happened a few weeks ago), vomit on students’ clothing, or, believe it or not, sealed bottles filled with urine left near trash bins, some Wesleyan students demonstrate a surprising lack of decency and respect for the people they live with.
In January, Freshmen Fauver residents received an e-mail from their Residential Advisors about how “some individuals have been urinating in an excessive number of bottles and moving them to the trash room to be disposed of by the Fauver custodial staff.” Besides the fact that such a practice is exceedingly unpleasant for other Fauver residents, who surely do not wish to encounter the smell of urine while throwing away their trash, it also indicates an appalling lack of respect for the University staff who have to clean up the campus after countless weekends of drunken revelry.
Yes, of course, it is the job of University staff to clean up after us; but the least students could do is make their lives easier and actually use the multiple restrooms on every floor of every dorm instead of deciding that the entire world is their urinal.
In this issue of The Argus, we interviewed Steve Hunter who “scours the campus every weekday morning for trash.” He claimed that Fauver trash rooms are not the only places he discovers bottles filled with urine: he said he finds “Gatorade bottles full of piss at the corner of Church Street and High all the time.” He also related a story about how someone who “didn’t even realize there were landscapers on the campus.”
It is this kind of ignorance that give college students a bad reputation, and it is unfortunate that students here continue to exhibit complete apathy towards other students, their surroundings, and the staff that works tirelessly to clean up after them, quite literally soiling the image and values of the entire University. For those students, we pose the following variation on an ancient adage: do not urinate on communal and personal property if you do not wish to be urinated on yourself, even if such urine comes in the form of bottles, as Hunter put it, “packaged for somebody to pick up.”