As the bell rings after lunch, students hurry to their next classes without a care to what trash they have left on the tables. Over the years students who don’t clean up after themselves seemed to be an issue. Dean of Students Greg Melvin said, “It has always been a problem, but it has gotten better over a couple of years because we have more security now, and they do a great job telling kids to pick up their trash.” It may have gotten better but it is still a reoccurring problem.

Staff members like Melvin constantly have to pick up after students when it isn’t initially their jobs to. Melvin said, “It gets old having to walk around and remind kids to put their stuff in the trash, and to me it’s just disrespectful of kids to expect custodians and even me to follow around and pick up after them.” Even students like Katrina Mai sees staff clean up students messes, she states, “It’s not that hard to throw away your trash. I just think kids are lazy. This one time I remember walking to math I saw our own principal having to pick up a kids milk carton.”

A great idea to help this issue would to have more from the student body to be involved. “Having student council or like a leadership class walk around and remind kids to take pride in cleaning up at least once a week until the place is all cleaned up would help tremendous” said Melvin. Students need to take more responsibility in their actions and not have to rely on others to look after them. Student Jorge Narcio said, “Students just leave messes because they think that if they don’t throw away their own trash, eventually someone else will.” Having a mindset like that isn’t fair to staff or even towards students who do clean up after themselves everyday. Melvin also states “All it takes is 5 seconds to throw away your trash and take care of yourself.”