After another chaotic Palmerfest on Saturday reminded many Athens residents why they hate us, yesterday was a much-needed Athens Beautification Day.
Crumpled beer cans and crushed cigarette butts flew lazily through the air yesterday morning. The discarded Budweiser cans and Marlboro butts that students thought were no big deal is now a filthy part of our campus.
It is not uncommon to walk down Jeff Hill and spot a half-empty smoothie cup and a Wendy's wrapper resting inches away a from garbage can. More cigarettes sprout from the soil in some campus flower beds than dandelions. Empty Aquafina bottles and newspapers sit throughout Siegfried Hall's Mitchell Auditorium.
Though it's baffling that students blatantly disrespect these high-traffic areas, we tolerate it because most never publicly express disgust about the debris.
College students are inherently messy. In dorm rooms, hampers overflow with beer-stained Polos, sweat-drenched boxers and damp towels. Many stereotypes exist about college students, but none is more universally accepted than the heaps of pizza boxes and beer cases bulging from garbage cans. This is all fine, as long as the mayhem is confined to personal areas.
Many OU students grasp this simple concept, but a minority failed to learn this lesson in first grade. For some, campus is a personal landfill. Unfortunately, student filth stretches beyond the confines of College Gate, plaguing both Uptown and off-campus neighborhoods. Walk down Court Street and notice the black globs that dot the sidewalks. These clumps are not patches of tar, but mounds of bubble gum that became permanent fixtures after millions of stampings.
Spring Quarter's notorious fests showcase Athens and OU to outsiders, but it highlights students' alarming levels of disrespect to the city as a whole. Students waltz into peers' homes and do not think twice about peeing in backyards, damaging windows and leaving behind a trail of debris. After festival goers' rowdiness reached unprecedented levels during last year's Palmerfest and April's Highfest, an enraged City Council responded, and rightfully so, with proposed ordinances limiting outdoor music and rooftop gatherings.
Tonight's meeting will certainly be more of the same handwringing and frustrations.
Students, citizens and local media outlets have framed the noise and roof ordinances, which are targeted at fests and students' overall disrespect of the Athens community, as the newest episodes in the town-gown conflict. Thawing icy relations between students and permanent residents is not the remedy for our lack of respect for the city. This will only happen when the greater student body publicly and forcefully demands their delinquent peers reform.
When students leave orange peels in front of campus benches and ice cream cones on Morton Hill, they disrespect the university's administration and staff. More importantly, they show disregard for their fellow students. Students should not have to worry about hopping over pools of melted rocky road and sitting in Grab 'n' Go remnants.
These seemingly small acts, coupled with the violence and destruction of fests, reinforces our party school reputation. OU students should be known for more than trashing the town during our street fests.
I am sure students privately condemn their peers that chuck beer bottles and leave candy wrappers on desks. It is time that this private fury evolves into a public wrath. When deviant students realize their peers are fed up with tomfoolery, will there then be a significant shift in our campus climate. In order to restore civility to the fests and respect to our campus, students other than The Post's editorial board and myself need to publicly express their disgust.
The annual Athens Beautification Day is a great way to start cleaning up the city and alerting us to the filth we live in. We rightfully worry about the destruction that comes after each fest, but often forget about the trash left behind. Respect from the city only comes after we take responsibility for the garbage and chaos.
Gabe Weinstein is a freshman studying journalism and
Monday columnist for The Post. Send him your Palmerfest memories at gw711008@ohiou.edu.
4 Opinion
Gabe Weinstein
