By: Twumasi Duah-Mensah
Heritage administration will sponsor a new “Litterbug Club” when school resumes. Students in this club will monitor their peers in person and with cameras for littering. Litter once, and it’s lunch detention. Litter twice, another lunch detention. Litter three times, and it’s a day in ISS.
Yes, administration met virtually to make the decision. And though it’s drastic, it’s not totally out of left field. Our student parking lot is disgusting. Students—for whatever reason—litter their off-campus lunch leftovers all over the lot like a landfill in their haste to get to class on time. But what really pushed admin over the edge, one administrator explained to the Herald, was when the Heritage High social media manager stumbled upon an Instagram post from Operation Wisdom displaying pictures of litter around the school. Troubled, she brought it up at the virtual meeting where the team thought of a club to deter students from littering.
Admin, of course, doesn’t want the club to just be for the goody-two-shoes who find joy in tattling on fellow students. To provide an incentive to even the most anti-snitch of students, Litterbug club members who serve at least a semester will receive an unlimited home game athletics pass for the rest of their high school career. Even better, what if they served at least a year? Upon graduation, they’ll receive an honor cord.
Did the administration panic? It was just one post on social media, the administrator admits, but that post was from Operation Wisdom. “They’re a student-led organization,” she explains, “so we figured that at least some students care about this issue a lot.”
And they’d be right. “About time the school acts on this,” a satisfied Haylee Perquinsant, sophomore, responded when she heard the news. “I think a lot of people are gonna think it’s too much, but if you don’t litter, you shouldn’t be worried. And you shouldn’t litter. End of story.”
Student consensus, or the students the Herald interviewed, agree that littering is wrong, but a good chunk don’t like the authoritarian nature of the new club. “This is America,” junior Attacus Thornton argued, “where you don’t get jailed for dropping gum on the ground. I’m not a litterbug or whatever, but this just sets a bad precedent.”
The Heritage Herald 