From sticky puddles to spilled drinks, gum stuck to the bottom of tables and names engraved into desks; chances are, if you’re a student at WSU you’ve seen the places on campus that look like this.

When it comes to a clean study environment many students at WSU can’t seem to escape high school.

It could be at the food court in the CUB, at your favorite study spot, or a large auditorium. Whatever the case, campus cleanliness is the student’s responsibility.

The solution is simple; students need to clean up after themselves and respect university property so the beauty of WSU is preserved.

Although WSU has set in place a thorough custodial process, custodians and groundskeepers are not enough when it comes to picking up after thousands of WSU attendees.

As stated by the WSU faculty directory, there are 249 staff members who have ‘custodian’ listed in their job description.

When considering WSU’s other campuses and the more than 27,000 students who enrolled in 2013, it’s evident students must lend a helping hand to keep WSU clean.

Sophomore business major, Kristin Jarvis-Fisher said, “I have a class in the Todd auditorium and every day I go in there, I see trash and spilled coffees.”

Jarvis-Fisher said she cleaned up most of the trash around her for the first week of the semester but she eventually gave up because the room would be littered with trash when she returned for her class later in the week.

To fix the problem students must pick up the trash they would normally leave buried in folded seats or kicked under tables.

Students don’t just lack the courtesy to clean up their own messes in classrooms.

A former WSU library custodian, who wishes to remain anonymous, said the library was one of the hardest places on campus to keep clean.

The custodian mentioned the sinks were plugged with paper towels and left on full blast so water would flood the bathroom on numerous occasions.

During this custodian’s time working at the library, there would be weekly occurrences of students urinating in the elevators.

While most of us are at least 18 years old at WSU, it’s obvious not everyone here is an adult.

This custodian said used condoms have been found in private study rooms so frequently it’s referred to among custodians as “the motel.”

Although the custodian said sex in the library happens more often at night, students occupying the study rooms even during the day have been guilty of closing the door and draping their sweatshirts over windows, thereby separating sex from study.

Flicked cigarette butts, empty beer bottles, coughed up phlegm, spit out sunflower seeds, and fecal matter wiped all over bathroom stalls are just a few of the messes the former custodian expressed.

The custodian said, “The students make such a big mess that we can never get out to other things like professor’s offices.”

As if the 5.5 million square feet of university buildings here on the Pullman campus alone aren’t enough to keep clean, students who littler university property makes the lives of our hardworking custodians much more difficult.

Unfortunately, the idea of “Cougs helping Cougs” obviously does not reach the lengths of helping our custodial staff, who work tremendously to provide a clean campus that so many of us take for granted.

– Josh Babcock is a senior communication major from Pullman. He can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of Student Publications.