By Hugo Narvaez
Businesses like Carl’s Jr., Taco Bell, and McDonald’s have gone out of their way to let East Los Angeles College students know that they will cater to our hunger at the right price.
Yet as convenient as this is, they have neglected the responsibility to bring awareness or to pitch in and help keep our campus clean of littering.
Their advertisement is clearly seen throughout campus, but not by some neon light or advertisement flyer, but by the trash that is found in the very front steps of our campus.
Most of us have done it; we see a hamburger wrapper or soda can on the floor and we ignore it, hoping that a custodian will come by and just make it disappear. Yet some how that custodian doesn’t come.
Call it destiny, or conviction, but that hamburger wrapper or soda can thrown on the floor wasn’t just left there by some slob, but by all the slobs who saw it and acted like they didn’t.
Campus pride must be at an all-time low if students can’t see their school being turned into a dump. Fast food restaurants are making a lot of money off students and faculty because they have become more convenient than packing a lunch from home.
To this we can only blame ourselves. We have neglected our time and have become prisoners of our own luxury.
Ponder upon this: if this were the University of California, Los Angeles or Harvard, would we let our campus be mistreated? Of course not! Prestige doesn’t start in the school we attend but in ourselves.
Taking pride in our school and demanding that these fast food restaurants contribute in the preservation of our campus is our duty.
Campus is a reflection of both students and faculty. We can’t expect outsiders to invest in us if we are not willing to invest a standard of campus pride from ourselves and those around us.
We can make a difference for future generations. By raising a standard of cleanliness and maintaining it, we will set ELAC a part form all community colleges.
We have an opportunity to give back to our campus, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because we owe it to ourselves to do it.
Bringing awareness to these businesses will create not only a bridge of understanding but a foundation of mutual respect for each other.
We can never resort to lowering our standards of having a clean campus. The outcome of such an act would place us in mediocrity and, at best, a low vision of ourselves.
