$8,520. That is the amount that a student will pay for the privilege to live in Georgia Hall for a year. It is a hefty sum; it’s more than most of the options at Furman, Erskine, Clemson or USC. One would think that students having to pay so much would treat their living space with respect.

Unfortunately that is not the case.

It is a regular occurrence to see garbage strewn through the halls of Georgia. Bags of trash pile on top of each other in the corners of stairwells. Empty furniture boxes sit outside dorm rooms for weeks. Half-eaten meals sit atop fire extinguisher cases, sometimes for days on end. The floors are often splattered with drinks and the ceiling tiles broken.

Simply put, the residents of Georgia Hall are mistreating their building. It is not the fault of the building’s maintenance, the Budd Group. Their responsibilities include daily and weekly cleanings of common areas and bathrooms. However, all personal trash is the responsibility of residents and should be removed from the building and placed in the dumpster.

In response to these images, Drew Peterson, Associate Dean of Students and Director of Residence Life, said they “display areas where students are making the place inordinately unclean and unfriendly for the other residents of the building.”

“Certainly, the Budd Group can assist in cleaning up spills that occur, but all of the personal trash is the responsibility of the residents,” he added.

There are a few solutions. The easiest and most obvious solution would be for students to take their bags of garbage to the dumpster. That’s it. Just carry your trash to the dumpster and put it in. If you’re too lazy to do that, then I wonder how you’ve survived here at Presbyterian College.

Peterson suggested, “The simplest way to stop it is to hold each other accountable and call out residents who are being lazy.  The best way is to be kind and help your neighbors take the trash out.  The housekeepers are only contracted to do standard cleaning.  Collecting student’s personal trash and cleaning the messes that are left goes above and beyond the scope of their work.”

In addition, students can take their food and litter into their own rooms and throw it away in their own trashcans. Some students have asked for trashcans in the hallways, and in theory that should work. However, according to one administrator, Georgia used to have trashcans, but they were removed after residents kept throwing them down the staircases.

If Georgia residents don’t change, there will be consequences. Leaving piles of trash around is a sure-fire way to attract roaches and rats. In addition, residents could face fines.

“If we do not put a stop to this, students will have to see those additional costs in the form of Community Damage charges,” Peterson said.

In the end, there are two options: Georgia residents can change, be accountable, and keep their hallways clean and free of trash, or they can continue doing what they’ve always done, and continue to damage the building and eventually their own wallets.