Despite being asked to clean up after themselves, about 3,000 students celebrating Memorial Day weekend left piles of debris
College students celebrating Memorial Day weekend by California’s Shasta Lake left behind hoard of trash, according to US Forest Service officials.
Last weekend, approximately 3,000 students from the University of California, Davis and the University of Oregon partied at Shasta Lake, a 30,000-acre reservoir in the golden state, and left piles of debris cluttered around the lake.
According to forest service officials, despite being asked to clean up after themselves, the students left behind trash including cups, cans, plastic wrappers and pool floats.
Speaking to CBS, Shasta-Trinity National Forest recreation staff officer Deborah Carlisi said that staff members handed out trash bags to students for them to pack up their items.
“Some students used them, some students didn’t,” Carlisi said. A three-person cleanup crew ultimately spent six hours picking up the trash around the lake. Nevertheless, not all the trash was removed.
Huh. I’m curious why they’re calling out UC Davis and University of Oregon when Chico State is right fucking there.
Maybe they were calling them out by the students actually present instead of by the colleges nearby.
Merely asking a large group of people to clean up after themselves is incredibly naive. The Forest Service, which runs hundreds of parks across the country, really ought to know better.
Even if a large number of people go out of their way to be responsible, it only takes a minority of assholes to make a huge mess. Without any kind of enforcement or guaranteed accountability (or better yet, a reward system like minibyte described), people are going to act like they normally do - whether they’re college students or not.
It wasn’t in this article, but another article on the incident mentioned that earlier in the year, there was a large group of students from Oregon State University who had a similar party weekend. The difference was that 40 of them stayed an extra day to clean up and haul out trash.
In that situation, it took just a small minority of people to clean up the entire mess of the large group. I have no idea if this is something that had been planned from the start but I can see how just a few principaled individuals deciding to clean up could inspire folks who maybe felt bad but didn’t want to make a fuss to stay and help out.
That’s awesome!
Without any kind of enforcement or guaranteed accountability (or better yet, a reward system like minibyte described), people are going to act like they normally do - whether they’re college students or not.
College students are adults and should not require a fucking reward system to pick up their own trash.
No, they shouldn’t, but adults constantly have to be threatened or bribed in order to meet the bare minimum of responsible behavior. Just look around.
Yeah, lotta shopping carts outside of bays out there
Ok boomer
Yeah, but like… have you met adults? They also don’t pick up their own trash.
Again. This happened before. Here’s a similar article from 2016 - not sure it’s the most recent example.
Require every student to do 100 hours of community service every time one of these things happen, or they don’t graduate.
I think the reward system would work better. I’d be incredibly pissed off if I had to do that after someone else’s mess. Also you can’t possibly know who’s at the party, you would have to punish every single student.
Didn’t they know Woodsy Owl? Sadly this is why we can’t have nice things and why parks can cost $10 to visit.
I wish to state 3 people 6 hours isn’t actually alot. Does it suck - yeah, but don’t act like this was mountains from 3000 people not caring.
A place seaside in Florida gave out 5 gallon buckets. A bucket full of litter earned you a beer or fish taco or something, I don’t remember.
The result of that was the cleanest stretch of sand you could visibly see.
Yeah I’m gonna guess that people would just start raiding trash cans for trash so they can get free beer and tacos.
That would be a lot of work for a beer. Probably just easier picking up trash around the beach where the buckets were handed out
That sounds like a lot more work than just dumping a bucket into a trash can and pulling it out. Like 30 seconds and not strenuous at all, compared with how long it would take to fill a bucket by picking up individual pieces of trash.
Dude, they are on a beach. You’re suggesting they are going to walk off the beach to find a trash can just to fill up a 5 gallon bucket for a free beer? Very odd.
You don’t have trash cans at your beaches?
Get a clue dude no they don’t
That is great for cleaning up an existing mess, but isn’t something to promote for people who are supposed to be basic members of society who properly dispose of their own waste.
