Grandview has a sanitation problem and only the students can fix it.
Bathrooms that make you want to just hold it for the day, tables in the cafeteria an animal wouldn’t eat off of, and staircases that make you want to buy a house with only one floor; these realities can become distant memory if Grandview students collectively decide make Grandview a better place.
We have all faced this problem: We go to lunch and all the remaining tables have spilled water and crumbs occupying the surface because the previous students didn’t clean up their mess.
Or, if you’re lucky enough, you may trip on some discarded lunch laying on the floor or the school grounds if you chose to eat outside.
“If you go outside in that field in front of the school, there is trash all over, and it’s disgusting,” an anonymous Sophomore student said.
Or perhaps you’ve had to go to a bathroom on the other end of the hall because the sight of the one closest to your classroom makes you want to lose the lunch you just had to eat surrounded by garbage.
“All the stalls have poop on the wall and toilet seats; we’re in high school, learn to hit the toilet!,” the student said.
Not only would a cleaner Grandview decrease the community’s collective nausea, but it would actually decrease the overall stress levels of students and staff.
A psychology study directed by Indiana University’s research scientist and professor NiCole R. Keith, Ph.D. found that people who spent time within a cleaner environment were less stressed, and more likely to engage in physical activity.
When you’re all nice and snuggled up in your bed, I’m working.
That’s right: not only will we no longer have to dread going to the bathroom and sitting down at a cafeteria table, but school will become that much less stressful; which sounds pretty desirable if you ask me
Some students may think it’s just an inconvenience that we can throw aside, but take a walk in the shoes of our custodians.
“When you’re all nice and snuggled up in your bed, I’m working,” said maintenance worker Ronnie Davis.
As much as we would like to blame it on the custodians, it simply isn’t their fault. The average Grandview custodian and maintenance worker works 8 1/2 hours a day, starting at 5 AM, cleaning mess after mess. How would you keep a school of 2,752 students clean with no help other than a few fellow custodians to pick up after the students during school hours?
By this logic, it would make sense to hire more custodians and maintenance workers, but it just isn’t in the school’s budget, especially when these messes are so preventable.
Unlike most problems in life, this one has an extremely simple solution: put forth some effort to keep your school clean.
A few examples would be ensuring you and your friends throw away all your lunch and clean up major spills and toss your trash in an actual trash can rather than in a urinal or the floor in the academic hall.
The biggest mystery in Grandview is certainly why some students do this.
“This is common sense, house training stuff. How do they not know this?” Davis asked.
So, on behalf of many Grandview students, staff, and myself: Please pick up after yourselves and others. This will put an end to the mess we call Grandview High. Have some decency.
Lain Iwakura • Mar 11, 2018 at 3:11 am
As to why studens would do this in the first place, I think that it’s just that humanity is inherently individualistic, and the less work that you have to do the better. Unless you have been explicity raised to always care about the feelings of others, most people don’t take those into account, especially when they don’t even get to see the emotional reaction from people that have to deal with the mess that they make. As much as I’d like to believe otherwise, there really isn’t a good way to get everyone to clean up their messes.
Mike Z. • Dec 4, 2017 at 11:27 am
I could not agree more. Fantastic article Jace!!!