Annie Richmond borrowed my bike almost two months ago, and I haven’t seen it since.

Which is a shame, because since school started, the weather has been phenomenal — perfect bike riding weather. The air is crisp, the sky is blue and the leaves are radiantly colored.

Luckily, I have been too busy to notice my bike’s absence as of late. Two teams I liked were competing to go to the World Series, my room can’t seem to stay clean and, oh yeah, those pesky things called midterms, which have continued even after grades were technically due.

Since the weather was still nice on Monday, I decided to ease some tension and get some fresh air. Only 12 hours removed from fall break, and I needed another one. Without a bike, my only refuge was a quick walk through the upperclassmen neighborhood.

As I strolled down 15th Street, I breathed in the fresh air. The Milwaukee stench was mild, and the smell of changing seasons was unsullied by the city. The sky was bright enough for sunglasses despite being overcast and the trees popped against the gray background. For minutes at a time, I worried not a bit about the papers and test due this week. The harsh deadlines of applications seemed fainter, and the five meetings I needed to attend later in the evening completely escaped my mind. Fall was full, but the walk was relaxing my tension.

Then my phone beeped reminding me I actually do have responsibilities. Resigned, I checked my messages, looking down for the first time since I dropped my backpack off at home.

That’s when I saw it.

Right in front of a row of apartments: Litter everywhere. Not just an abandoned beer can or two, but sprinklings of red Solo cups, Jimmy John’s wrappers and junk lining the sidewalk.

It was gross.

The luster of autumn beauty wore off as I began to notice the inordinate amount of garbage strewn along Kilbourn. I had assumed the crunch under my feet to be dried leaves, not trash. The gray sky mirrored the muddle underfoot. And I began to realize that we are totally trashing our neighborhood.

On my way back to Marquette-owned property, I noticed that there was far less litter. I’m not insinuating underclassmen are more environmentally conscious — I have a feeling most of the abandoned alcohol containers outside of houses and apartments were theirs.  But our grounds crew obviously does an awesome job of picking up after us. Because, apparently, we are slobs.

Where the campus-owned property lines are marked is the ever-important distinction between under- and upperclassmen. My latest revelation is that it also divides squalor from a cleanliness we take for granted. It is one thing to be living in a pit, but it is quite another when the garbage spills out of the house and onto the streets — especially since beyond Wells, these streets do not have garbage cans.

The most horrifying part is that had I been on a bike, I would have never noticed the filth! I would have kept ignorantly enjoying the beauty at eye-level and higher, even though the sidewalks resembled a dump.

Maybe we forget to notice the litter in our urban campus. But amid the myriad of red, orange and yellow leaves littering the ground, we have a real litter problem on our hands. We need to start taking some responsibility here — disposing of garbage is really not that difficult. Yes, it would be helpful if we had trash cans on every corner. But we can keep our neighborhood clean easily enough. Take pride in where we live and resist the urge to mess it up.

And, Annie, any time you want to return my bike, you know where to find me.