op-ed Where is our social responsibility?

Author: Andrew Piccirillo

Before continuing reading, I would like you to consider where you obtained this copy of The Campus.

I'm a student employee at Proctor Dining Hall and I have a request - please bus your own tables. It's not my job or the job of anyone else in the dining halls to do this for you. You may or may not have noticed the signs in the dining halls that read "Please bus your own tables."

You may wonder how much of a problem this really is or whether to take me seriously. Well, consider this - in Proctor alone it usually takes two people half an hour to pick up the messes people leave behind, and that's before even starting to wipe down the tables. Now that might seem fairly insignificant compared to global hunger and AIDS, but what does it say about our community as a whole?

It's not just the fact that the College has to pay people to pick up after students. Students leave behind things they've been taught to pick up since childhood, including dozens of plates, bowls and glasses, even more utensils and literally hundreds of used and unused napkins.

I understand the fact that every community produces waste that requires cleaning. However, I frequently find myself wiping down a table right next to an obnoxiously loud group of five or 10 people who get up to leave, look at me as they file past and leave several glasses, utensils and dirty napkins on the table, seats and floor. If I can, I politely request that they go back and get whatever was left behind. Sometimes this results in everything being removed from the table. Usually, though, I end up following them to the dish conveyor to dispose of the last few items anyway.

The unwillingness of people to pick up personal items like dishes and ice bags reveals a lack of social responsibility within a student body that claims to pride itself on its social activism. How can students preach responsibility on a global scale when they fail to practice it in their daily lives? This hypocrisy has become apparent to me not only from my experiences at Proctor, but in a variety of other situations.

Students at Middlebury regularly and almost systematically avoid responsibility when the consequences cannot be traced back to them.

Do I really go to a college where people urinate in the corner to avoid waiting in line for the bathroom (at The Bunker)? Do people really leave boxes full of dirty dishes in the dorms for weeks? Does the administration really have to send out e-mails reminding us how to behave? Was the Hepburn kitchen really shut down because of an insect problem related to dirty dishes? Who are these mysterious irresponsible people?

The event that finally motivated me to write this was a recent op-ed in The Campus entitled "A Preface to Lunch: 'Think about this' - I wanted some tea not scuzz in my glass." Mr. O'Brien spends a large portion of the article complaining about dirty dishes. I agree dirty dishes are a problem, but I'm sure the problem would be solved if Mr. O'Brien volunteered to spend his time scrubbing each dish clean after dinner. I'd also bet that Dining Services would be happy to pay him. He goes on to suggest that people shouldn't return their dishes to the dining hall. But what really got me was when he ponders responding to his janitor's complaints about dishes in the bathroom: "our commons dean has more important things to do than worry about one dish in the bathroom."

I understand that the article was intended to be at least as humorous as serious, but this is just plain arrogant and offensive. Let me point out that many College employees regularly read The Campus. It's one thing to be lazy and irresponsible, but it's another to openly complain about and mock people for reminding you how to behave.

I experienced something similar several months ago when I received a well-intentioned e-mail from the SGA informing students they had scheduled a meeting with the head of Dining Services in response to student concern over increasingly dirty tables. The response to the students' complaint was humorously appropriate - Proctor now makes a bucket and rag available for student use. I haven't seen it used in over three months.

The fact that students do not appreciate the services provided here could not be more readily apparent. The sense of entitlement here is overwhelming. The freedom of college is not a license to behave like an animal. Freedom, politically and socially, is a responsibility. So the next time I see you in Proctor, please don't make me ask you to return this paper to the newspaper rack when you're done eating.

Andrew Piccirillo '10 is from Lyme, Conn.