Archived Edition: October 17, 2007 | Back to Current	Jul 31, 2010

Editorial: Put feces in the toilet, not our community
Editorial Board

Williams College, wake up and smell the urine. The recent rash of drinking-related biological clean-ups on this campus is not par for an undergraduate experience. Though the onus for raising awareness about this issue and punishing known perpetrators falls on the administration, the brunt of the responsibility for solving this problem lies with the student body. This pattern is an embarrassment to the College, and every single student is implicated.

The body fluid-related messes we’ve seen this fall are not normal, at the College or at similar schools. Administrators in departments ranging from Facilities to Campus Life have stated that this level of widespread disrespect for property is unprecedented on this campus. And while it’s long been popular to chalk up any alcohol-linked problems here to a national collegiate zeitgeist of binge drinking, we find that explanation hard to swallow in this case. While we acknowledge that unhealthy drinking patterns are common at schools across the nation, we know that custodians cleaning up 24 biological messes – including six involving feces – in less than two months is not. Director of Campus Life Doug Schiazza’s recent survey of peer institutions confirmed this reality. Staffers at one other NESCAC school expressed shock at even being asked about the topic, and were only able to recall a single case of bio-cleanup on their campus. Though excessive imbibing is common at other colleges, the level of rampant disrespect for property we’re seeing here cannot be written off as average.

Some campus leaders have responded to the recent incidents by calling on the administration to become more actively involved in dealing with these messes. A suggestion put forth by neighborhood leaders proposed that for each bio-cleanup on campus, every member of the student body should be required complete a certain amount of community service. This idea is foolish, implying a poor grasp on the administration’s responsibilities. Undertaking such a plan would be an ineffective use of administrators’ time and energy – imagine the hours of work necessary to coordinate over 2000 service opportunities.

We take another line. The College has the responsibility to educate students about alcohol, to make it known when alcohol-induced behaviors are unacceptable and to rigorously discipline any students they identify as property-desecrators. Administrators must make information about what behaviors they consider unacceptable and the punishments that will follow such actions – a set of disciplinary measures that should have been agreed upon and publicized weeks ago – widely available to students.

But let’s be realistic about how much these efforts can do. Care as they might, Schiazza and Dean Merrill are not the ones standing in line for the keg on Friday nights. We’re the ones on the ground, participating in this culture that is increasingly allowing, well, shit to happen in public places. As such, we are the ones with the real power to change it.

Many of our readers may be wondering why we’re filling our editorial space with condemnations for acts they haven’t committed. The answer is clear: the volume and variety of these bio-incidents indicate that this is everyone’s problem. While only a few people may be making the messes, by standing silently on the sidelines, the majority of us are implicitly accepting this behavior. If the only noise the majority of us make about this issue is grumbling after-the-fact when our houses are slapped with fines, how can we expect change?

To alter this culture of permissibility, our student community needs to be pro-active, engaging these problems before the messes happen. That means being mindful at 10 p.m. on Saturday night in addition to being so at 10 a.m. Sunday morning. Even in the midst of revelry, we need to make it our personal responsibility to look at ourselves honestly and acknowledge our limits, and those of our peers. Our responsibility is to ourselves, our friends and all members of the Williams community – even those faces we’ve only seen in passing. If you’ve had seven drinks in the span of an hour and feel dizzy, grab a friend and find a bathroom. If your roommate is ordering a fifth round and turning green, get him a glass of water. And if you see a student stranger unsteady on her feet at an all-campus party, escort her to the ladies room.

In a community this small, no one gets to claim that they’re merely a victim of circumstances, a passive resident being acted upon by nefarious outsiders. This culture of disrespect and defacement is the introduction first-years are getting to the Williams community. This is not an acceptable status quo and has the potential to set a dangerous precedent. We all have a responsibility to look beyond ourselves and act as engaged community members. And we need to do so before demanding that Hopkins Hall step in and solve a problem as infantile as us getting too drunk and making disgusting messes for janitorial staff members.

The bottom line: it is not Merrill’s job to control our bodily functions. Asking the administration to do so is absurd. It’s our job to remain in control of our bodies, and our job to foster a culture that does not accept the kind of destruction we’ve been seeing this semester.