It’s Friday…no, Saturday…no, definitely Friday. Gee Whiz. You’re floating down Fountain Avenue, just like many of the University’s students before you, on the prowl for the best night of your life. You’ve never seen your Environmental Studies classmates outside of Fisk Hall and now they’re flooding the streets, arguing about whether to go to the Red Flag party or cross the street to the “CEOs and Office Hoes.” 

“It’s pretty lively,” one resident of Fountain Ave, Daëlle Coriolan ’24, said about the weekend scene. “There’s stuff happening everywhere…. The music is loud. The people are on the street.” 

Since time immemorial, Fountain Avenue has been the place to be on a weekend night. Rising seniors anxiously await the night when they can throw the best party. It’s not surprising that student houses on Fountain Avenue are more run down than their counterparts on Brainerd Avenue or Home, as a result of the decades of rambunctious partiers that came before them. Perhaps that’s part of their charm. 

But every night eventually comes to an end, no matter how epic the party is, and the stragglers stumble toward the shining light at the falafel truck. So it goes, the sun rises on a new day, and students haul their cross-body totes to Olin Memorial Library, forgetting their wild nights. 

Back on Fountain Avenue, a new day doesn’t necessarily mean a clean slate. 

“Every week I would wake up in the morning the next day on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, and it’s just a whole new world,” Coriolan said. “There’s red solo cups. And I just think to myself, who is cleaning this?” 

Like Coriolan, other Fountain Avenue residents are unsure how or when the trash gets cleaned up. Is it other students? Is it faculty? Or is it the grounds crew? 

“It’s just the kind of thing where I notice a bunch of trash, then the trash will be gone, and then the trash will be back again,” Graham Ferguson ’24 said. “I don’t know who cleans up after it at all. I’ve never seen anyone doing that.”

Although Ferguson doesn’t know where most of the trash left in the street ends up, he and his housemates make an effort to clean up after their own parties. They don’t mind.

“When we woke up, most of the clean up was inside and we just kind of did that ourselves,” he says. “Most of it was moving things back to where things were before the party. It’s not that big of a deal.”

Colm Davidson ’25, another Fountain Avenue resident and the senior captain of the rugby team, has inherited an efficient cleaning system thanks to a tradition on the sports team. 

“We have a ton of freshmen on the rugby team,” Davidson said. “You pay your dues by cleaning up. That’s the secret to cleaning up parties. After the party clears out, I gather my cleaning crew and say, ‘Come here tomorrow morning at 11 a.m., and you’re going to help me clean up.’ I supervise it, and it gets done.”

While some outside observers may initially be wary of this tradition, Davidson reiterates participation is entirely voluntary. All of the current sophomores, juniors, and seniors on the team participate in the tradition and understand its merits for the team. In fact, he even sees the potential for a teaching moment in this practice. 

“I feel like doing community service,” Davidson said. “I’m watching these kids get out there and sweep and mop. I give them a little guidance on how to actually clean floors…. Plus, if I’m inviting you into my home and you’re gonna dance on my tables, then you can wipe them down afterwards.”

Despite some students’ efforts to clean up after themselves, not every house takes the time to pick up after themselves. During the warmer months, this can mean lots of red solo cups, beer cans, and even vomit sitting for days at a time in backyards. 

“There’s a couple houses on the end of the block,” Ferguson said. “And they’ll throw and then for a while after their party there will be a lot of trash low key on the sidewalk and the street. It’s like red solo cups and beers and stuff.” 

While this blasé attitude toward caring for student houses and communal outdoor spaces doesn’t necessarily enrage fellow Fountain Avenue residents, the constant party-mess cycle can be frustrating.  

“If wood frame housing is supposed to model more independent living then students should be responsible for picking up after themselves and not relying on maintenance to come and pick up their mess,” Coriolan said.  

The messy streets don’t escape notice of non-students walking around campus as well. Even professors mentioned seeing remnants from nights of partying. 

“I walk from my campus house to the [Freeman] Fitness Center pretty early in the morning and have occasionally noticed solo cups or other remnants from social gatherings around the senior houses,” Vice President for Student Affairs Mike Whaley wrote in an email to The Argus.  

While sightings occur, they can be infrequent thanks to coordination of many different departments at the University who pick up the slack when messes fall through the cracks.   

“We don’t get many complaints about uncleanliness near the senior wood frames,” Director of Community Standards Kevin Butler wrote in an email to The Argus. “That is not to say that it isn’t messy in that area from time to time.”

This level of cleanliness is only possible because of the grounds crew’s vigilant monitoring of the University grounds. On top of their usual responsibilities, the grounds crew also picks up trash.

“The grounds crew is so efficient and clean up so early on Saturday and Sunday morning, I don’t think the larger student body has fully seen what a mess it can be,” Associate Director of Residential Life Maureen Isleib wrote to The Argus.   

According to many employees and administrators at the University, while the grounds crew does help keep Fountain Avenue clean, it’s far from ideal. They frequently stressed the importance of student responsibility in taking care of the mess that they make. 

“[The University’s] expectation is that students living in the wood frames will pick up after themselves and their guests,” Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Rick Culliton wrote in an email to The Argus. “When that doesn’t happen it does fall to staff to clean up trash and we would prefer that they not have to spend time cleaning up.”

One groundskeeper, Rob Burghoff, said that he and his coworkers typically tend to more central areas of campus first and sometimes give Fountain students a day or so to respond to the mess themselves before intervening. 

“My philosophy is, let’s let them wake up and sober up,” Burghoff said. “[Residents] will usually do somewhat of a half-assed attempt to try to clean up a little bit.”

However, Burghoff noted that even when students are given some time to clean up after themselves, the groundskeepers ultimately have to do the bulk of the work. The clean-up is typically done early on weekday mornings, but occasionally, after especially rowdy or dangerous parties, groundskeepers are called in on weekend mornings as well. Burghoff recalled getting called in at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning this semester to clean up smashed glass. 

“It’s a little frustrating sometimes that we have to clean it up,” Burghoff said. 

Yet Burghoff does not see any significantly better ways to respond to the post-party chaos. He argued that the most popular proposed solution—assigning blame to specific students and fining them—is not efficient in practice, as such a system would require the involvement of ResLife or another administrative program. 

“If [ResLife’s] first order of business Monday morning is to drive down and see who made the mess and try to assign blame to it, they don’t want to do that,” Burghoff said. “That’s an extra thing for them to do. They [will] have to re-staff and have more people to address those kinds of things…. The kids could deserve a slap for it, but who’s gonna do it? And who’s gonna implement it? Sometimes the aggravation of implementing it is worse.” 

Moreover, he noted that such a response would only delay the clean-up process. 

“[ResLife] are more 9-to-5 people,” Burghoff said. “By 9 o’clock, the whole world has already seen the mess.” 

The groundskeepers, in contrast, are used to working at 7 a.m. and can simply clean Fountain Avenue as part of their other maintenance duties. Thus, Burghoff concluded that the current method of responding to the mess makes the most sense, even though it is not ideal.

“It lets the kids have their cake and eat it too,” Burghoff said. “But the problem is solved, and it’s behind everybody…. We’re gonna do it with a smile on our face, and we’re gonna keep our job and just get it done and be done.” 

Burghoff pointed out that the mess on Fountain Avenue is merely a particularly crude example of the many ways in which the University’s staff members have to clean up after students’ messes. 

“We have to do a lot of stuff that’s at the hands of somebody else,” Burghoff said.

The University’s current system—allowing adult students to litter their street at parties and enlisting staff members to clean up their messes—is certainly problematic. However, it does not seem like this system will be substantively reformed or replaced anytime soon. For the time being, encouraging students to take responsibility and clean up after themselves is the most effective solution. 

Ella Henn can be reached at ehenn@wesleyan.edu.

Lula Konner can be reached at lkonner@wesleyan.edu.

Abby Glassman can be reached at aglassman@wesleyan.edu.

Correction: A previous version of this article misattributed Culliton’s quote to Butler and vice versa. The article has been updated with the correct quotes.

Correction: A previous version of this article noted that the rugby team involves first-years in cleaning up after parties but did not specify that that players of all class years participate voluntarily, according to Davidson. The article has been updated with this clarification.