The Ohio University tradition of Halloween has long been a time of students and their guests flocking Uptown sporting the best in costume apparel and partying until the wee hours of the morning.
The pros of this wonderful weekend are equally matched with the cons of the trash, food and other unmentionables left by all of the Athens visitors.
The mindset of OU being the No. 1 party school can lead to the guests having a great time, but it can also lead to bad decisions and a blatant disregard for campus cleanliness.
While OU students take a sense of pride in their alma mater unmatched by anyone (at least in OU students’ opinion), the students coming in from other schools have a view of OU being simply a party school that they arrived at to have a good time with no consequences.
Sure, there are OU students by the thousands who litter on Court Street. Students discard their gum, causing a black fungus-looking residue for years to come.
There are plenty that leave a house absolutely unrecognizable. But we understand that we have to deal with the grossness the following Monday.
The guests pack up their costumes and head back to their campuses, untouched by the craziness of thousands of people.
OU students know how to enjoy themselves but just as you wouldn’t throw a house party and break your own lamp, Bobcats know how to have a good time while thinking of the repercussions of their actions whereas the guests who come don’t care if the lamp is shattered into a million pieces and they certainly don’t care if the lawn is flooded with red plastic cups.
With all of this is perspective, Bobcats should teach their guests how to respect this beautiful campus that brought us to Athens in the first place.
Teach them to stay up ’til the sun rises, strut on the brick streets in their costumes, and most importantly, keep our beautiful campus beautiful.
Jessica Mitchell is a freshman studying philosophy
