In the movie "Gone With the Wind," there is a sequence where the camera pulls away to reveal a seemingly endless field of soldiers wounded during the siege of Atlanta.

Marquette has its very own version of that scene outside of McCormick and Schroeder halls. There are often fields of cigarette butts, stray office equipment, discarded pieces of paper and cans of beer and soft drinks strewn about.

By the time Sunday morning rolls around, the campus is cleaner. The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. Almost everyone has a friend who once had too much to drink and relieved himself — we think its safe to abandon gender neutrality on this one — in a stairway on campus. Almost everyone in a residence hall has woken up Saturday or Sunday morning and found someone's dinner on the bathroom floor.

As Earth Day approaches, we pause to ask, what price is paid by our slovenly behavior? We do more than leave an unpleasant visage for ourselves and those who attend Sunday morning mass at Gesu Parish. We also spend valuable tuition and room and board dollars on additional custodians and equipment that are used to clean up after ourselves. Perhaps the next time we complain about a tuition hike, we ought to make sure that we aren't doing things to drive up the cost of maintaining a university.

A cleaner campus isn't something that would require a revolutionary lifestyle change. Students can still smoke their cigarettes, drink their beer and throw away old, useless papers. However, an effort should be made by more of us to use the ample ashtrays and garbage cans on campus. Maybe instead of drinking until loss of bladder or stomach control, we can drink in moderation — or at least make it to the nearest facilities. If all else fails, we can also pick up after our peers and toss a piece of paper or a spare alumninum can in the garbage when we find one lying around.

One can almost picture a world where the grass on campus is a pure green, untarnished by debris. One can almost smell a bathroom or stairway without a horribly offensive odor. One can even picture a Tribune article talking about how the next tuition increase is about $5 less than the previous one.

All it would take is a modicum of respect for our surroundings and a little self-control, a small sacrifice to spare us such horrific battlefield imagery.

This editorial appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 21 2005.