After this first week living on campus, I am so glad to be back “home”. Since school ended last semester, I longed to come back to Eastern. I missed my friends and the atmosphere that students bring to life throughout the year.

While walking around campus recently, I couldn’t help but notice how clean it looked. The grass was a vibrant green, the trees were trimmed and most of all, there was no litter.

It seems that during the first month of school litter is not a problem, but after a while it becomes more prominent and sometimes excessive. Maybe the campus appears clean because Eastern wants to impress new students and faculty, or maybe it’s because everyone is trying to start the year off on a good note and is more conscious about disposing of their trash.

As weeks pass and the school year starts to get hectic, so do people’s lives. Unfortunately, that’s when people start to rush their day away and not care about or pay much attention to their surroundings.

Sometimes I see people on campus, glued to their phones, walk right by a trashcan and then toss a candy wrapper on the sidewalk. What’s up with that? How hard is it to stick that wrapper in your pocket or backpack until you can put it in a trash can?

As a good citizen, I pick up after these people because I care about the environment and the animals in the area. Eastern has a beautiful campus that creates a good first impression for visiting students and their families and may be one of the reasons many choose to enroll here.

That impression should not be tarnished by careless littering. It’s disrespectful and shows no respect for this establishment and all that it stands for.

Some students may think they can litter because someone else is going to pick it up, whether it is a groundskeeper or another student. Don’t rely on people to do your job. We should always be conscious of what we are doing and how it affects the community and ecosystem as a whole.

School can be stressful, I get it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stop for a couple seconds and dispose of some trash. There are dozens of trash and recycling bins across campus and there is no excuse for there to be litter. I’m sure most of us do not litter in our homes, so be good residents of your home away from home here.

Do the right thing and stash  your trash where it belongs, not on the grass, because we are all better people than that.

Kate Rehwinkel is a junior management major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or at kerehwinkel@eiu.edu.