Every home football game, an army of college students pillages the local liquor and beer establishments and descends on the stadium grounds to cheer on their side and to party with their friends. The other side of this debauchery is the thousands of beer cans, bottles, Bojangles’ boxes, and Solo cups that are left behind; making the fields by Trinity Road look like ISIS bombed a landfill.

But is it just the students? 

If one were to take a walk through the lots surrounding the stadium, an interesting trend emerges. As you get closer to the stadium, things become more and more organized. In the sections reserved for season ticket holders, there are no public trash bins. Each person is trusted to bring his or her own receptacle and clean up after each other. Even closer than that are the bins for the people waiting in line. These tend to be much more uniform in terms of trash being put in the correct bin according to Shawn McLean, part of the clean-up crew working for Sparkle and Shine. “Here and there you see people using the wrong cans, but for the most part people put their trash where it belongs,” McLean said.

McLean was working the gate at Dail Plaza West, which is a non-student entrance for mostly families and alumni. There were 36 bins at his gate, 18 for landfill and 18 for recycling, lining either side of the four rows of people. At the gates the people are in very close quarters and there is a significant staff and police presence, which could contribute to people being more careful about their trash. 

As you get further away from the stadium, on the twin sides of Trinity where the majority of the student tailgaters are, the trash cans are scattered around about 50 feet apart in pairs of bins for trash and recycling. Even with the recycling bags that are passed out before the party starts, by 1 p.m., two-and-a-half hours before the game starts, beer cans are overflowing the wrong bins and many are left all over the ground with nearby bins left empty. 

Ken German, an employee of McLaurin Parking Co. (one of the contractors hired by NC State to deal with trash) who was cleaning up Fraternity Row at halftime of the game said, “NC State has a contract with a recycling company which provides the bags and the bins, but as you can see, when the students get drunk, they don’t really care what goes where.” 

He also pointed out that kids were carelessly jamming their empty cans into the recycling bag dispenser. 

It’s clear that when we feel that familiar warmth of alcohol, “Seven Nation Army” over the loud speakers, and the possibility for glory, little concerns us other than winning or losing. This is a societal trait that hasn’t changed even with all of the social shifts of the recent years. We still take for granted the fact that someone else is paid to clean up after us, or in the case of the fraternities, that pledges will do it. 

But are all sports fans the same? Can some be more socially and environmentally aware than others? Of course we can be, but it’s a matter of personal responsibility toward the image of our university. NC State is going through an overhaul of socially conscious reimaging with programs like “Think and Do” which was advertised during half time of the game, bringing it into the top 100 colleges in the country according to U.S. News & World Report. Clearly, though, this hasn’t sunk in with the students. As a generation, we are often maligned for not caring, being lazy, etc., and in this case at least, it is deserved. 

The student conduct at the FSU game I attended was not any worse a showcase for our area in terms of social/environmental awareness than the Flea Market going on next to the fairgrounds, but we are the new generation and part of a university that is seeking to emerge onto the national stage of technology. We have to get over the hangover from the behavior of previous generations. 

The Wolfpack football squad represented itself well—if not above expectation in a losing effort—but the students showed that we still have not realized what an impression it can make on a university’s image to clean up after itself no matter how hard we party. Think and do, otherwise it’s just trash talk.