It's a class college sequence. A warm winter day in the sunshine. Boy meets girls while waiting for the shuttle bus. Conversation ensues. Both of them have to see the used coffee cups left behind by their fellow students -- nicely aligned on the curb -- and leave them as litter. Ten feet from the trash container.
Well, snow is due tomorrow. It will just cover this over anyway, right?
Huh? You're castigating bystanders for not picking up litter, when it seems you didn't pick it up yourself? Your logic seems to be that if one attends a certain educational institution, one has a moral obligation to pick up the trash of one's fellow students. But you , who seems to be so bothered by said trash, is excused from that same obligation. Huh.
ReplyDeleteAs a parent, the utter blindness of teenagers to anything in their environment was always a source of wonder to me. In the wild their survival rate would be nil.
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Dear Anon 3:33,
ReplyDeleteWrong message for me. I am bothered by it, and I pick up litter all the time: http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/2011/08/trash-talk.html
In fact, in this case, I went back shortly after and picked up the cups.
But, do you think that is really my responsibility?
As for picking up trash of one's fellow students, yes, I think they should. This is their designated bus stop, and the trash is their community responsibility.
I think if you embrace the concept of community responsibility, and you're a member of the community, then yes, it is your responsibility as much as anyone else's. I, too, pick up trash. If the person who leaves it can't be accountable, I would not think anyone is any more responsible than I am.
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