By Cameren Brown, Courier Staff Writer
Just about everywhere we walk on campus, there’s one thing that follows us. Gum. You know all those black spots all 
over the ground? That’s what most of that stuff is.
I asked a few students what all this gum makes them think of the campus. Most certainly had concern with it such as senior Austin Sanders,who said “It makes me wonder what parents think when walking on campus during something like open house.” Indeed, a school’s campus should reflect its students, and parents would probably like their kids to be reflected in a better light. Another senior, Armando, put most the blame to the students, “some people are just hoodlums, spitting everywhere.” Of course, we can assume that over the many years students are the prime contributors of this. Which raises the question, what’s the solution?
Senior Michael Sam, claimed that there’s no need, “I don’t think about it much, maybe if it was covering the whole campus I’d think it was more of a problem.” While Austin suggested that the janitors should do something. I believe it’s a bit too late for such a solution, this stuff is basically part of the ground now, and scraping up literally hundreds (if not thousands) of these tiny things, I think, is way above their paygrade.
He also suggested that a straight out ban of gum on campus might be effective. Several teachers place this ban within their classrooms, yet if you reach under a desk, you immediately know that sticky texture of what you just touched. Plus, many other things are banned here, such as off-campus lunch, but all the time I see students with bags from seemingly the whole city: McDonald’s, Chick-Fil-A, and more. So a school-wide ban of such a commonly used product (among teens especially), seems rather counter-productive, getting kids unnecessarily in trouble.
The cleanliness of our campus is certainly important, but I don’t think we can stop what has already occurred, and prevention with extreme measures likely won’t help much.
