Take a stroll around the parking deck for a few minutes, and you’ll see that our wonderful school has a real problem: littering in the parking deck. It’s not pretty, folks. Empty Starbucks cups, crumpled fast food bags along with discarded worksheets and napkins. All of these line the stairwells and decorate the concrete deck levels, or they are crushed under cars or trampled underfoot. Walking or driving over trash has become inevitable, and our once clean(ish) parking deck has become a bit of a garbage can.

So why is it so dirty? Are students so overwhelmed by the pressures of their day that they momentarily forget about the existence of trash cans? (If so, I completely understand.) Or even worse, does our student body just not care about the upkeep of our campus?

Sometimes when you’re running late and you really just have to go to class, you freak out and throw your trash anywhere because you have to get rid of it, and that’s understandable. (Maybe …) But another reason there’s so much trash is the factor of anonymity – no one knows who throws their trash anywhere. Seemingly no one seems to care.

I mean, being responsible for your own trash, along with other items like backpacks and textbooks – it can all be overwhelming, right? Even superstars struggle with such great responsibility. In the wise words of Kanye West: “I hate when I’m on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me / like, oh great, now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle.”

Despite the distressing amounts of litter in the parking deck, students and teachers are decidedly against it. “I think that litter out there is awful,” said sophomore Sarah Hetzel. “At your house, you don’t leave trash everywhere, so you should respect where you are, even if it’s a parking deck.”

Junior Grace Willoughby agreed. “When I was a freshman, it used to be everywhere, all the time. Then they put in trash cans, so it got better. But lately it’s seemed a bit gross.”

Although trash cans should’ve helped the garbage issue, they could also contribute to it. So many in our wonderful Warriors family are seemingly trying to hone their basketball shooting skills and are doing so with paper and fast-food bags. And it’s clear we’re not all Kevin Durants. We miss and our trash lands on the parking deck. And, too ashamed to pick it up, all of these errant Warriors leave their trash behind.

Although the practice of dropping litter in our parking deck isn’t going to disappear anytime soon (or will it?), it’s my hope we all become a bit more conscientious about the matter. Hey North Atlanta – don’t be dirty birds! Let’s keep the land of the Warriors trash-free and gorgeous!