With shards of glass crunching underfoot, a student carefully steps over a Doritos Locos box stained with brownish slime. Paper bags adorned with every conceivable fast-food logo blow past his foot like garish tumbleweeds. Scattered cigarette butts and candy wrappers like autumn leaves breeze down the walkway. This might sound like the city dump, but it is actually the scenery in Parking Lot H.
While EC is currently revamping the campus with new buildings and remodeling, for example the Math, Business and Health Sciences Building, students here are not taking care of the campus as they should be.
Unfortunately, even a full time staff of custodians and groundskeepers can only do so much in the wake of more than 27,000 students, groundskeeper Fernando Vincente said.
“A lot of the groundskeepers don’t actually get to do much grounds maintenance. Most of the time we just have to deal with the trash,” Vincente said. “Without exaggeration, I probably spend five or six hours a day just cleaning up after students.”
And while some spots on our campus could be called dirty, others are down right disgusting. Public bathrooms are never really held up as paradigms of cleanliness, but many EC students refuse to even enter some of the restrooms on campus.
“I think I saw something moving in one of the toilets,” Gustavo Aguilera, 18, business major said.
Some students wish others would do their part in keeping the bathrooms clean as they are used by students themselves.
“The Art Building bathrooms are filthy, it’s absolutely disgusting in there. I don’t know if it’s some girl’s idea of artistic expression, but they need to artistically make it less stinky,” Anne Cabalum, 21, History major said.
While some mess has to be expected, the problem only becomes worse when students begin deliberately damaging the campus.
“There’s vandalism everywhere, but it’s really bad in the bathrooms. There’s like entire conversations on the walls,” Veronica Grindle, 20, Graphic Design major said.
While graffiti might be an eye sore for students, to painter Jimmy Macarino it’s a distraction that keeps him from dealing with more important issues.
“Yesterday I spent three hours cleaning up graffiti in the men’s bathroom of the Humanities Building and I still didn’t get all of it,” Macarino said. “I see a frustration. There’s this situation with the campus cutting classes and fiscal issues for everyone and I think this is how students vent that. You can feel it when you look at their vandalism,” Macarino said.
Macarino went on to caution students that with repeated budget cuts and an uncertain financial future, they may have to start taking up some of the load themselves.
“Everything we do here is for the students, we really care about them, but every little thing they can do to help us really does go a long way to make the campus a better place,” he added.
