Someone needs to say it: the profusion of half-eaten food that blankets our campus after a day of school is truly disgusting. Too many times I have sat down in the CEI only to find I am sitting on an empty bottle of Hint water while a plate of pasta with semi-coagulated marinara sauce dwells by my feet. Or perhaps, when all of the backpacks on the entryway benches have been removed, the benches remain obscured by empty bags of apple chips and foul paper plates. Or finally – the most scarring experience of all – walking into a study room after lunch only to find it is a sauna of entrapped fumes originating from the plate of sweet potato fries surreptitiously stashed under the table. 

This complete and blatant disregard for basic sanitation at our school is demonstrative of the incredible privilege and lack of consequences that many Marlborough students, myself included, experience. Too many students are entirely content to desecrate our campus with repulsive food waste, under the expectation that it will vanish by the next day. The staff who help keep our campus clean are not responsible for cleaning up your lukewarm tostada. It demonstrates a complete disregard for the effect one’s actions have on another individual and a complete disconnect from the consequences of one’s actions. The cumulative impact of our neglected food waste creates an entirely unpleasant environment in which to work and attend school.

The presence of food in spaces in which it is banned also demonstrates flagrant disregard for the basic rules (of which there are not that many) of our school. When students have access to beautiful spaces like the CEI in which to study and yet continue to pollute them with incredibly foul food waste, it serves as another demonstrable manifestation of privilege. So few schools have the resources to provide their students with such amazing spaces, yet somehow we have managed to defile the CEI with the sheer volume of poorly disposed food. 

So now… a proposition. Marlborough staff should just leave all improperly disposed food waste as is. Don’t touch it. Just allow the magnitude of filth to stagnate until so intolerable the Marlborough students can finally wake up from their squalid stupor and learn to dispose of their waste like adults. Perhaps this is unfairly punitive to students who don’t contribute to the waste problem, but given the incredible proportion and ubiquity of this issue, it seems an iron fist must rule. 

The practice of defiling our campus with unused food and trash is a disgusting one and something that does not represent Marlborough students as thoughtful, conscious and self-aware individuals. This habit is symbolic of girls who have been allowed to abuse our privilege with impunity for too long and desperately need to learn how to take care of a communal space in a mature (and sanitary) way.