Editorial-Natural Beauty Covered in Trash

By Dave Ragazzo

Ramapo College is located in the middle of the deciduous forest, which is one of the things that makes it attractive to aspiring students. The environment on and surrounding the college is beautiful, and is home to a lot of wildlife. Because of this, many would think that the majority of the students treat this environment with respect. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

If you walk through the various parking lots on the campus, or outside of the dorm rooms, you will often see trash spread sporadically throughout the campus. It is appalling to believe that the students of this fine institution would treat their campus like this, but many of the students do not have an appreciation for the environment. It is sickening to see, but unfortunately, there is not much that the college can do to stop this pollution from occurring.

Praise must be given to the college workers as they are normally quick to clean up the mess left by the irresponsible students, which shows that they are willing to put in the effort to make Ramapo an environment friendly campus. However, the large mess is usually attended to by one or two employees, which is not enough for the normal clean up. It should not be the responsibility of the college to hire more employees to clean up a mess that is made by their students, but something must be done. Recently, they finished construction on the Sharp Sustainability Education Center. The Center’s main goal is to teach students environmental literacy, and to emphasize sustainability. This is one step that the college is taking in order to make sure that their students are environmentally aware.

Ramapo College does a lot of things to “go green.” Recently, Ramapo was involved in the signing of American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, which unites many colleges and universities across the country to control the amount of global warming emissions, and make everyone aware of climate change. Ramapo is also involved with a very extensive recycling program that goes around the various campus housing units and picks up students recycling once a week. Although this program is great, there is still a great number of students at Ramapo that do not recycle, which is still part of the problem.

It is obvious that the college is making a conscious effort to become one of the most environmentally friendly colleges in the country. However, the message is not spreading to every student who lives on the campus, as every day there is large amounts of trash that can be found throughout the various parts of the college. There’s only so much that Ramapo can do as an institution, but more responsibility has to be put on the student body. If the students work together, they can make Ramapo College a much more beautiful campus than it already is, and the wildlife can get the respect that it deserves, as it is a huge part of the Ramapo campus.