By Lauren Shin, Staff Writer
A few days ago, a custodian asked a student to pick up their trash, who in return responded with disrespect and made a snide remark about how it is the custodians’ job to clean up after students.
Recently, you may have noticed an increase in leftover trash on the lunch table as you sat down, or scraps of paper and gum wrappers left behind on your desk in class.
Hannah Kogul, a sophomore, has definitely noticed the scraps of trash around our school. She says, “People don’t really know their manners and can’t clean up after themselves. Custodians already have the whole entire school to clean.”
The school custodians have been working hard- despite being understaffed- to keep our school as clean as it can be. However, it is not their job to clean up after the students’ mess.
Mrs. Casper reminds us that the role of our school custodians is to “sanitize everything during COVID, such as the bathrooms and lunchrooms; not to pick up after students.” Mrs. Casper is a history teacher here at River Hill who is determined to speak up for the custodians and make sure that they are receiving the respect they deserve. She shares that she is “concerned about custodians dealing with student behaviors.”
Hannah empathizes with the custodians by saying that “Students can just throw away one piece of trash, especially if it’s their own. It’s not that big of a deal.”
Our custodians fulfill their duties every day, but the process takes much longer when students consistently leave their trash around. Not only does this create unnecessary problems for the custodial staff, it also diminishes the value of our school.
Kaitlyn Sharp thinks that “Students are being very disrespectful and don’t pick up after themselves.” She continues by suggesting students receive “punishments; there has to be consequences such as a warning and referral.”
Although it is unclear why there has been a sudden increase in the amount of litter around our school, our custodians have had to work even harder to maintain a clean environment for us. Mrs. Casper says that students caused excess work “because of the Tik Tok challenges vandalizing bathrooms,” as well as “leaving trash on tables and the floor after both breakfast and lunch.”
People would expect that high school students are responsible enough to clean up their trash, especially students from a school as great as River Hill.
Mrs. Casper and other teachers are doing their best to resolve this issue by making announcements in lunch, emailing and speaking with fellow 4th period planning teachers who have decided to make their presence known in the cafeteria, and walk around to pick up garbage.
However, teachers and administrators can only do so much to help. It is time for us students to step up and take responsibility.
Mrs. Casper reminds us, “We need to figure out as a community- do we want to treat other people like that? Do we want to go to school in an environment that is unclean? It’s very simple just to consider that every time you make a decision to leave garbage on a table or do something inappropriate in the bathroom, you are creating more work for somebody else who already has enough work.”
Let us think about how our actions impact the custodians and the rest of the community. We need to take charge and remind one another to clean up not only after ourselves, but also after one another, for the greater good.