By: Eric Norris
Mountains of trash piled up all over every dorm. The waste of every student has piled up in dorm trash cans around each building, making one of the dorms especially stinky. How the issue is being handled is questionable but the solution should be simple.
Caleb Gonzalez, a full-time history student and part time facilities worker, is responsible for cleaning primarily the Thompson dorm. The Thompson dormitory is primarily a freshman dorm but has transfer students living there as well. The past couple weeks, Thompson has been more difficult to clean. According to Gonzalez, his boss, Brian Jobson, has asked him to stop cleaning the 3rd floor.
Gonzalez commented saying, “Do not confuse my desire to clean up Thompson, to clean up after you. My job is to tidy up, not to clean up disgusting messes that students should know how to clean.”
Brian Jobson has made the decision to remove all public trash cans on the third floor of Thompson because of food containers stacked too high against the wall. One would think that the trash can would be left alone because it was full, but instead residents placed spoiled milk, empty pizza boxes, and paper cups all around it.
Of the 3 floors, the first-floor residents seem to care and offer to help workers by opening doors and cleaning up after themselves. As for the second and third floors, food is constantly being left all around the lobbies, furniture flipped or out of place, and the carpet being covered with crumbs.
The increase in students has been a financial benefit for the school but, more people, means more disposable waste.
Student Safety Officer, Victor Moore said, “I was called for a complaint in Thompson Sunday morning, where a couch was tipped over and furniture was moved around. It had that feeling that the dorm was abandoned.”
To help meet the demand for more trash, the garbage truck has to come more often. The garbage truck used to come once a week to collect all waste but now it has to come every three days. Before it arrives in the morning, a worker gets on the forklift and moves the 2 full dumpsters from the resident parking lot to the cafeteria dumpster. If only residents can take all their trash to the dumpsters instead of leaving it in the lobbies, the dorms would smell better, and workers like Gonzalez would not have such a hard time doing their job.