East Stroudsburg Needs to Clean Up Its Act and Its Facilities

By Savannah Leigh
SC Staff Writer

As an in-state East Stroudsburg University (ESU) student, I pay $8,181.98 a semester, which adds up to $16,363.96 for a full year. This cost has gone up almost two thousand dollars since I started here two years ago. When I look at my bill breakdown, I see random things, such as General Instruction Support and General One Card Programs. Paying for all these things, I think I have a right to assume that the bathrooms on campus will be clean.

When I go into the bathrooms in Stroud Hall, there is toilet paper on the ground in the stalls, paper towels overflowing out of the trash can and out of date flyers that have fallen to the ground.

I learned as a freshman that it is a necessity to check for toilet paper before you go to the bathroom. I cannot count how many times I looked over and realized I would have to ask someone to hand me some toilet paper. How embarrassing! I have also been on the other side of this, handing toilet paper to another poor girl. With the floors covered in toilet paper, you have to be sure you do not imitate a movie and walk out with toilet paper trailing behind you on your shoe. Then, when a student goes to wash her hands, she is lucky to get soap and paper towels. If she is so lucky, she has to pile more towels on top of the already overflowing trash can.

Then there are the never-ending flyers that are attached to the doors of the stalls and the walls of the bathroom. If they aren’t already ripped and on the ground, chances are they have only been there for a few hours. Or you read the flyer and realize the event that is being advertised happened three weeks ago.

Go to the Union bathrooms and you can add stained toilet seats to the list. With seats that have red stains all over, a girl can only assume one thing.

It bothers me to go into these bathrooms and see how gross these seats are. Our university can spend money to get all new cop cars and a new milkshake machine, among many other things, but ESU cannot seem to afford to buy ten new toilet seats for these bathrooms.

There is something wrong with this picture. The amount of people who use these bathrooms a day and see how gross they are just goes to show how many people put money into this university. All of this provides a not-so-happy experience for a student. I, myself, try to stay out of the school bathrooms, but sometimes it is not possible.

I see maintenance and cleaning staff around Stroud Hall and the Union on a daily basis, yet I never see them cleaning these atrocious bathrooms. I see them putting in new toilet paper and emptying the trash cans every now and then but never picking up or sweeping the dirty floors. I understand that this cannot be a simple job with the amount of people that use these bathrooms a day—that maybe the staff cannot keep up with the trash and cleaning—but for the three years that I have attended ESU, I have never seen anyone sweeping the floors, even at night.

The bathrooms are not the only places that are not clean on the ESU campus. The hallways, classrooms, showers in the gym locker rooms and outside grounds on campus. But I think that I speak for everyone when I say the bathrooms are by far the worst.

Email Savannah at:
sgl2434@live.esu.edu