By choosing to live in Stone, I was aware that I would often wake to the smell of stale beer throughout the building. I was even aware of the fact that I would participate in creating the inevitable dorm mess once in a while. The filth inside the dorm is not what bothers me. My gripe concerns the fact that children who want to do nothing more that go to school and learn how to color must step over broken beer bottles every Friday morning in order to get to the swing set.
It seems like common sense: don't leave broken glass and sharp cans right outside a nursery school. There's a fence around the playground outside Stone for a reason. The playground is there for the kids; it isn't there to serve as one huge trash receptacle. One weekend morning a week or two ago, I walked outside to find a smashed pumpkin in the playground. Fantastic. Now the kids have to avoid pumpkin guts while playing on the little metal school bus.
Undoubtedly, these children's parents have witnessed the fact that the school looks like a temple to the beer gods on Friday mornings. Hey, if they're lucky, they may have even noticed the faint smell of beer-sweetened urine on the school's walls. We might pause to consider the impression that we leave on the children's parents.
All I'm asking is that we give the little kids who go to school a clean environment to learn and play in. So, next time you're unzipping your pants to urinate on the Little Red Schoolhouse, remember that the wall you're pissing on might be base for tomorrow's game of tag. I just hope that we can all start acting our age and realize that, drunk or not, it isn't fair to make kids go to school in our filth.
Jerry Hilinski '04