College students don’t necessarily have a reputation for being clean people, but this weekend was especially enlightening. This past Saturday, I decided to take part in the bi-annual UB Gettin’ Dirty event, sponsored by the Student Association. Essentially, a ton of SA club members walked around the University Heights area and picked up garbage in order to fulfill SA club requirements, lured in by the promise of free t-shirts and pizza. It sounds like an innocent enough event, and a great opportunity for community PR for the SA.
As a long-time, year-round resident of the Heights, I’m supportive of any opportunity to clean up my neighborhood. I always notice that about a day or two before classes start, garbage begins piling up. Walking to South Campus every Saturday morning for Generation production usually means stepping over various puddles of puke. But rather than become energized by the good deed I was doing, I was mostly bogged down by how actually disgusting the Heights area is.
Our route started off down University Avenue, and being further down the Main block, it’s inhabited by more families than students. The street was, for the most part, spotless. There was an occasional candy bar wrapper, but very little trash was to be found, and there wasn’t a weed in sight on any of the lawns. It was like a slice of suburbia, only a short few blocks from the dilapidated Custer Street.
And then we turned a corner. The rest of our route included Devereaux, Angle, and Tyler. The peaceful, suburban atmosphere was gone, and exchanged for heaps of garbage stuffed beneath shrubs that had definitely never seen the likes of trimmers.
So, I ask you, students who are residents of University Heights, why do you insist on littering? Not just littering, but littering some of the most disgusting stuff I’ve ever seen. Pregnancy tests, a bag full of a brown substance that I can only assume was poop, condom wrappers, broken beer bottles, weed bags, and something that might have at some point been a crack pipe. I can’t claim that every piece of garbage I picked up once belonged to a college student, because that isn’t the case, but a lot of it had to be. How is it, in this day and age, after all of the ridiculous public service announcements and in-school advocacy against littering shoved in our faces, can anyone actually, in good conscience, litter?
I can only imagine this occurs because so many people don’t consider the Heights their home. The Heights is just a temporary living situation between trips back home to Rochester, Long Island, Albany or where ever. But if you ever find yourself stumbling down Englewood, drunk, with an empty Solo cup in your hand, try to get past your inebriation long enough to think twice about it. You might never notice them, but there are families who live there. There are children who play on these streets, and there are adorable stray kittens who are going to get mangled by your disgusting, piss-filled, broken beer bottles. Just think of the babies and the kittens. While this might just be a temporary stop for you before you go on to something better, have some respect for the people who have always called University Heights home.
Furthermore, making our neighborhood a dump doesn’t benefit anyone. The quality of the homes isn’t great, and the area is notorious for slumlords, but how can we expect landlords to want to upkeep a home that is littered with beer bottles?
The trash isn’t good for your grades, either. According to a recent study of college students by the Center for Facilities Research, there is a direct correlation between the cleanliness of student environment and their academic achievement. Do you want shitty grades on your midterms? Because I don’t. So, next time you’re walking to your car, which is probably several blocks over because of the shitty parking situation, and you see a Molson can on the ground, stop being a lazy jerk, and pick it up.
