Keeping our campus clean is something we struggle with on a daily basis. This is due to the students not cleaning up after themselves. We also find classrooms trashed with food wrappers left everywhere and dirt all over the floor, and we don’t have the proper staff to help and keep up with the school. 

Our students on campus have a number of reasons for why they refuse to keep clean, and reputation may be one of them.

“Students who litter or don’t pick up after themselves tend to do so because they want to fit in or seem chill. People will follow the crowd if it means they have a place with a group of people,” senior Leticia Ruano said. 

“I think a lot of students don’t pick up after themselves because they are trying to look cool for other people, and that for perspective, imma throw this on the floor so that I could look like a bad person,” said Ruano. “They’re going to give off that bad boy impression like ooh I’m a bad kid, like no one can stop me.”

Students wanting to fit in with others and not wanting to stand out is not acceptable here on campus, at least in the scenario of littering campus when instead we should be taking care of our school. Not everyone should be punished for acts of disrespect.  

“It should be the ones who are responsible for making the mess because it’s not fair for other people who do clean up after themselves to have it cleaned by them,” said Ruano.

Although campus is not an easy task to tackle, there may be another solution for keeping our campus clean.  

“I think the ones that should be cleaning the campus should be the people that don’t want to be in class, all the ditchers, so if you’re not in class, you might as well do something like a campus beautification program,” said math teacher, Mrs. Munoz.

There are plenty of ditchers roaming around campus, so it would be a great idea to force them to do something productive and clean up our campus if they’re not going to be attending their classes. They only make our campus look bad and that is not a look we want. The rest of the students do not deserve to come everyday to a filthy campus. SBHS is practically a first or second home to many of us, and we should treat it with as much respect as possible. 

There are few students who tend to not take school seriously and let everybody else look after the place, but what they don’t realize is that their lack of care has a big impact.

“It is not enforced by the school. Students don’t understand that in order to have a clean school, they have to take care of the school,” said English teacher, Mrs. Hanafi. 

As for how we can solve this issue, Munoz may have a few solutions.

“Well if it was up to me, I would have a fence all around the quad, so when you are done, you put your tray in the trash can or you don’t leave that area.”

This is something that could potentially work here on campus, although it may need a bit of tweaking to it such as making it less restricting so students don’t feel like they’re held in a prison. 

“I think we should just have an area where the kids just eat, don’t just go behind the choir, so once you are done eating, leave that area and I think that would be much easier to control,” said Munoz.

Here at SBHS, what are some ways you think would help to keep our campus in shape? Leave some suggestions in the comments below!