UCD students are reportedly terrible at picking up after themselves despite being old enough to know how to do it. Peak rubbish-leaving areas include the Insomnia Café, Subway in the Gerald Manley Hopkins building, and every table in the Newman building. Other notable areas include everywhere else on campus. One other hotspot particularly popular with “I think I’ll just leave my rubbish here” enthusiasts is the seating area opposite the SU shop in the library building. Here, one can come to gaze in awe at the sheer will power of the tables trying not to snap in half under the weight of coffee cups and sandwich packaging.
While it should be noted that clearly not all UCD students litter, but there is more than generous sum (some might say statistically significant) who clearly do. Boffins at Ireland’s highest-ranking university are baffled as to what may be the cause behind this startling discovery (not really though). So, here we hypothesise just why this may be!
- They forget! It happens, right? I mean, it’s busy being a student! Masters student Tristan Blake-Hickey is a regular of the SU shop, frequenting it daily. When questioned, he claimed that he was just “too damn busy” with his thesis to put his coffee cup in one of the dozen nearby bins. “Let the cleaners earn their pay!” he roared, as this writer made for a hasty exit. It was later discovered that he was actually a former philosophy student at Trinity College Dublin – Ireland’s second highest ranking university (good for them!).
- They are too busy having conversations in the middle of the staircase! Students are, in part, not totally to blame here. After all, most people can agree the middle, or indeed any part of the stairs, is the best place to have a conversation! Mostly due to the fact that it doesn’t bother anyway that you have conversations there. At all. You’re clearly not in anyone’s way! Really, no one ever whispers “Jesus Christ” or “Moooove, please God move” under their breath when they walk past people chatting in the middle of the stairs.
- They are too busy walking slowly in front of people around campus as though they’re a tourist in Trinity. These noble individuals are here to remind us at stressful times to calm down; to stop and smell the roses. After all, whoever made time made plenty of it. Didn’t they? No. Because otherwise people would put their rubbish in the bin and not leave it on the table, right?
- UCD’s Flat Earth Society have declared they are 90% sure the Lizard People are behind it this mountain of rubbish that mysteriously appears every day despite bins being available. Other theorists have blamed the swans, but there is as yet insufficient evidence to support such an outrageous claim, as the Flat Earth Society were quick to point out.
- However, it could just be that some students are simply just too lazy and or ignorant to put their rubbish in one of the hundreds of bins provided on campus. A lack of recycling bins around campus has also been thrown out as an idea but that’s probably just students passing the buck to the UCD hierarchy as usual!
James Simcox – Turbine Writer
