If you take a 10-minute stroll around Virginia State University, you will see historic buildings, pretty nature, and great students – but you will also see litter on the sidewalk.

Our campus and community are great, but we have always had a trash problem here. There hasn’t been a year where a specific dorm hasn’t been fined for excessive trash in the dorm, or campus cleanups haven’t had to take place to handle the trash problem. Even at the end of Homecoming Week, student organization members (like the Junior Class Council) cleaned up the campus because so much trash was left out after the week’s festivities. Even at my residence hall, I’ve seen people throw trash on the ground and throw trash right next to an empty dumpster.

The trash issue is not just a big problem because of how it looks on campus; it’s a big problem because of how it looks to visiting students. It’s a big problem because so much trash ends up as litter in the rivers and ponds around campus. It’s a big problem because a huge burden is put on the campus maintenance employees to clean all of it up constantly.

As students, we should want to look at a clean campus when we walk to our classes. It makes us look bad as a school. If you are a student at Virginia State that litters, you pay to make the campus look dirty. It doesn’t make sense.

It shouldn’t be the responsibility of campus employees to go out of their way to clean up constantly after us students. We should be doing our part to keep the campus clean. While campus cleanups are held, more students should be outside at campus cleanup events. And after seeing the insane amount of trash left on campus after Homecoming Week, I know that I will be doing more.

To any students who litters on campus, I urge you to think about the impact of your actions. To campus employees that are constantly cleaning up after us, thank you. I know many of my peers, and I appreciate your effort to keep the campus clean.