artillerie

Today Clement and I cleaned up the mess left in the quad by the day's activities of fraternities and sororities. There were at least fifteen coffee cups and thirty cans & bottles, not to mention a towel, an umbrella, a cereal box, a pile of water balloons, and various snack wrappers. Every time I looked outside I was disgusted, and realized that no one was cleaning it up, or was going to. So, during a lull in the rain, I decided to do it (and Clement, being Clement, dutifully helped me out, taking over the recyclables). Maybe eight people in total saw us do it, none of them Greek; so, as a publicity stunt, it wouldn't have worked. To make a point, it was useless. I cross my fingers for karma.

The thing is, when confronted about it, every member pointed their finger at a different organization. Don't sororities and fraternities front like their purpose is community service? I'm sorry, even though cupcake sales and dunk booths are nice, the meaning of community service is lost if you don't even care about your immediate community, your school.

The first offense is leaving all that garbage to rot on our benches and litter the campus with plastic. The second offense is not one person bothering to clean it up. It took us two people all of fifteen minutes to pick it all up, and we didn't even get to join in the fun today. In fact, the Greek races and tug-of-wars outside my window distracted me, frustratingly, from a report I was writing.

I just got tired of looking at it, so I picked it up.

As I told Megan, in my previous post, the blame game doesn't accomplish anything. I may be the loser for cleaning up today, because not only was it not in my self-interest, but the Greeks "got off the hook." But guess what, the task got done once somebody stopped complaining and got to work.

I stand by my statement that anyone with Greek letters on them needs to grow up; all participated, and yet none took it upon themselves to make sure the quad was clean; therefore all are guilty.