One of the biggest complaints on campus often happens when students and faculty make their routine trips to the restrooms. The problems are obvious; No liquid soap in the machine, no paper towels, the trashcans are overflowing with papertowels and the floors are all wet. Those are just some of the problems that EC students have issues with. They are hoping for a cleaner EC.
Although areas on campus might seem untidy at times, teachers are not complaining. They actually love and appreciate the hard work custodians do for EC. Assistant Director of EOPS Jeanette Magee, says that she has no complaints about the custodians here at EC. She thinks they do a marvelous job. “I give them an A+++ in every category,” Magee happily said. Magee states that not only custodians do an excellent job as far as maintaining the campus clean, but they are also very helpful. “If you need anything fixed, or cleaned, they go out of their way to do it for you, they are just very helpful,” Magee said.
When it comes to the hard work and dedication that custodians do for EC, piano instructor, Nancy O’Brien thanks custodians for always doing their job with consistency. “Everytime I come in my classrooms first thing in the morning, the room is always neat and tidy,” O’Brien said. She also says that she has never had a problem with her room being dirty. “Not that I know of,” O’Brien answered when asked if she ever had problems in EC. “They do a great job.”
Faculty members in EC say that custodians work to the best of their ability and are always willing to lend out a helping hand. Students in EC however, don’t quite agree with faculty. Nursing student, Jason Ferrer gets irritated everytime he steps into the restrooms in EC because he thinks they are dirty. “The bathrooms are dirty,” Ferrer complained. “There are no paper towels, tissue, soap, and when you want to dry your hands, the blower breaks down,” Ferrer said in utter displeasure.
When students use the library computers and touch the bottom of the desks, they are often finding a nice, sticky surprise for themselves: A chewed up, old, dirty piece of gum stuck underneath the computer desks and work tables. This problem irritates students especially Nursing student, Patric Carino. “It’s gross when I’m in the library and I touch the bottom of the desks, there’s a piece of gum stuck on there, its disgusting,” Carino said.
To sum it all up, Computer Science student, Jim Cantada says that there is just too much trash on campus, which makes it unpleasant for students. “There’s trash everywhere, I mean look at that(pointing to a piece of garbage on the floor), there’s trash everywhere,” Cantada said. Nursing student Paulo Legaspi blames custodians for not doing their job. “They are lazy,” Legaspi revealed. “If you look at the blue carts with the janitors in them, all they do is talk.” Legaspi said. “And if you walk in front of them, they’ll rudely honk their horn at you,” he added.
Although some students are blaming custodians for the campus being dirty, Computer Engineer student, Carlo Francisco blames students for the campus being cluttered with trash and paper. “Students assume that since janitors are going to pick up trash, they think they can just throw crap everywhere since janitors are going to cover up for them,” Francisco said. Admittedly guilty of throwing trash everywhere, Francisco thinks students need to be more responsible. “I know I do it too but we are grown ups in college, no one should be cleaning up after us but ourselves,” Francisco said.
With the amount of cleaning and hardwork they do for EC, some custodians feel that they are underappreciated. Plumber Andy Winter hopes that higher officials would consult custodians and plumbers first before they come up with proposals. “We maintain the college,” Winter said. “If it weren’t for us, the school would close down. If you had a pipe leakage, or health inspection comes in, we’ll get shutdown,” Winter said.
Custodian Luis Bonilla says that him and his fellow custodians are consistent with doing their jobs. “We do our thing everyday,” Bonilla said. He thinks that EC officials need to hire more night custodians because there are not enough of them. “We are understaffed with nigh custodians so you only have so many of us at night going around to fix things,” Bonilla said.
Some of the problems in the restrooms are because of students. Utility custodian Keith Pipkins, says that students sometimes don’t flush toilets making it untidy for others to use. “Students that use restrooms sometimes don’t flush, that’s why they’re dirty and smelly,” Pipkins said.
Student activities on campus such as club events, are part of the blame for the campus being dirty. Jose Calindo, head of operations for custodians, thinks that students for the most part, do a great job with picking up trash and being clean. It’s just the variety of activities on campus that makes it dirty. “Sometimes when you have events, things get dirty. Trash doesn’t get picked up and there’s paper everywhere,” Calindo said. “But for the most part, students are conscientious when it comes to that stuff.”
Even if there are high demands for custodians to clean up on campus, they never complain and are always willing to do the job. They just wish that they were a little more appreciated by everybody. “We have a can-do attitude and were more than willing to clean,” Calindo said. “We hope that we get appreciated a little bit more. Whenever they(higher officials) come up with something, please let us know because we are the ones doing the job,” Winter said.
Cleaning up on campus is a big job. To point fingers as to who is responsible for the mess shouldn’t be an issue because it requires teamwork for everyone to help out. “We know that sometimes people get upset but you know what? It’s everybody’s responsibility not just ours,” Winter said.