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In print | Published September 24, 2009

This week is Environmental Services, or EVS Appreciation Week, and one EVS Technician prefaced the occasion by having to clean up fecal matter deposited in the closet of a resident. Sadly, this story may not even be the most repulsive occurrence that has resulted from the exciting weekend activities Swarthmore students have long participated in. It can be quite confidently said that, virtually every weekend, at least one of the dorms on campus is plagued by vomit on carpets and other similarly disgusting byproducts of having too much fun.

For example, last year featured a flooded toilet in one of the women’s bathrooms in Willets Hall that was paired with a student’s vomiting right into the midst of the overflowing water. In situations such as this, the overriding sentiment expressed by exasperated bystanders and busily vomiting sufferers alike seems to be resignation. Each person affected by the vomit (or the feces) resigns themselves to the fact that there is not much they can do to remedy the crisis — and if there were, going down that path would clearly take too much effort. After all, Swarthmore College has EVS Technicians on hand to clean up messes. And so resignation becomes indifference, both to the stench of the human excrement and to the thankless job the faceless EVS Technician will have to do on Monday morning.

Such a generalization of people’s rationalizations in those situations might seem simplistic or harsh, but there is no doubt that the temptation to give up at four in the morning because “Hey, it’s EVS’ job to clean it up anyway” is an easy one to succumb to. And it is one that students do give in to far too often.

Unfortunately for those who seek solace in that kind of reasoning, it is most certainly not EVS’ job to remove feces from anybody’s closet. It’s not even their job to remove feces from the middle of the hall. Scan the official description of an Environmental Services Technician in the gray box on this page: EVS makes sure we have a “clean and environmentally healthy campus” by undertaking tasks that are designed so that everybody else on campus makes the removal of garbage as orderly a process as possible. In other words, they take out trash that is already thrown in trash bags. They replace toilet paper without worrying that fecal matter is on the dispenser. They vacuum the carpets to get rid of the smaller particles of dirt that cannot so easily be picked up and disposed of.
They do not remove shit from people’s closets.

There is an overwhelming lack of respect for the humanity of the EVS Technicians on campus. Admittedly, their job is to help keep Swarthmore a cleaner place. But there are some tasks that we ask of — or force upon — them that challenge all concepts of civility. Resident Assistants across campus do their best to contain our baser natures by implementing punishments systems where, for example, failure to clean up vomit in the middle of the hall means everyone has to pay a certain amount of money to the hall fund (which sometimes is given to the EVS Technician inconvenienced). Sometimes, though, even a monetary penalty is not a strong enough deterrent, at which point EVS Technicians have no choice but to clean up the mess. After all, it is not as though they can vacuum around the mess until somebody’s conscience takes over.

Clearly, the problem is one of personal responsibility and accountability. And one of respect — not just for the EVS Technicians, but for the places that we have to inhabit for most of the year. It is easy to dismiss the responsibility of caring for a dormitory because the place is, after all, only temporary housing. That does not mean there is a free license to destroy property. Four weeks ago, the third floor lounge in Alice Paul still added meaning to AP’s status as one of the “new dorms.” Now there are tables with legs missing and chairs with unidentifiable stains on the cushions. At what point does letting loose on a weekend, even after the laborious struggle Swarthmore students have to grind past every week, go too far?

Decompressing after a hard week’s work does not mean that all sense of accountability is thrown out of the equation as well. When there is vomit on the carpet, it defies human decency for nobody to clean the mess because “that’s EVS’ job.”

Obviously, this issue is not one that is confined to Swarthmore. Indeed, the aftereffects of parties at certain other campuses are likely far more catastrophic than can be found here. On some campuses, EVS Technicians have even greater responsibilities — at Claremont McKenna College, for instance, the EVS workers also have to provide services to individual dorm rooms.

From an outsider’s point of view, no firm conclusions can be drawn from how that expanded role affects the dignity with which Claremont McKenna’s students treat their EVS workers. There is no doubt, however, that there are problems of how to ensure accountability from dorm residents at campuses all across the country.

Now, would the fact that it was a fellow hallmate’s job was to clean up vomit and feces change how residents treat such regrettable incidents?

There is, of course, an aversion to creating more manual labor-oriented jobs for student workers on campus. An intellectually-driven community is understandably resistant to having its students perform blue-collar work; the consternation over servers at Sharples is already widely acknowledged. But it would be a telling test of our civility if, perhaps, a student employment opportunity that complemented EVS’ work was created—say, for example, weekend Environmental Services provided by a student worker. Alternatively, hall cleanup duty could be rotated among residents.

Whatever the format, the key point is to make a resident the one responsible for cleaning up. It would be an interesting study in how we treat those whose thankless task is to remove our messes.
Our consciences, perhaps, would be more easily moved if we knew that our hallmates were the ones who had to suffer through janitorial duties. Or perhaps we would continue on as we always have.

This exercise in the hypothetical is not mere wishful pondering. It highlights what is quite blatantly the great dichotomy of our campus: for all the environmentalism and social activism that students promote, we can still make drastic improvements in how we treat our EVS Technicians.

The counterargument, of course, is that perpetrators of vomit or feces left unattended represent the great minority of students. Truthfully, however, that rings more like an excuse than an argument.It is past time to take responsibility for our messes.

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