The major difference between middle school and high school is individual responsibility. In high school, most students drive themselves to school, attain a job, meet deadlines and balance school and home life schedules.

As young adults, we no longer want our mom to hold our hand and kiss us goodbye. However, some of my peers still seem to need their mom to pick up after them during lunch.

When I walk by the cafeteria between third and fourth block, I am embarrassed to be a part of the student body. There are still trays left on tables. Whole pieces of fruit, empty drink bottles and cookie wrappers are found on tables, in chairs and on the floor.

“The amount of trash in the cafeteria bothers me. There are trash cans placed everywhere throughout the cafeteria. It is not that hard to pick up your trash and put it in one of the trash cans,” senior Shelby Deghand said.

If the students don’t clean up their own mess, then it is left to the custodial staff.

Custodian Jim Owens has been an employee of the school for the past six years and, he is the brave soul that faces the lunchroom every afternoon.

“The fact that I have to pick up trash doesn’t bother me, because that’s my job, but a a lot of it is unnecessary, like waste, such as apples, oranges, or paper trays left on chairs,” Owens said.

In between lunches, Owens is given a two-minute time passing period for cleaning and preparing the cafeteria for the next lunch.

Owens is a one-man army battling nearly 150 sloppy students after each lunch period.

“At the end of the last lunch, another custodian comes to help me clean. It still takes us an hour to pick up the whole lunchroom,” Owens said.

“After the lunches, we use a leaf blower to get all the trash from underneath the tables,” Owens said.

There is clearly a problem when the person cleaning up after someone is forced to use a leaf blower.

“Another big problem has been grapes. Grape day is terrible. I find them clear up to the other end of the hall because kids would throw them at each other during lunch,” Owens said.

Because of this, the staff has been cutting down on the amount of days that grapes are served.

We are in high school, and some of us are so irresponsible that our menu has to be monitored.

The staff has also tried to prevent a dirty lunchroom, in the past by revoking nutrition break, however that only worked temporarily.

This year, they tried putting a teacher in charge of each lunch, in order to watch over students.

“It does help some days to have a teacher up and walking around, but there are still some days that are messy. It’s hard to watch the whole lunchroom,” activities director Dwight Spencer said.

Half of the school will be living on their own in less than two years, and some of the students can’t even throw away their lunch tray.

“If you have pride in your school, you are not going to want to see it a mess,” Spencer said.

It’s time to be a big kid, and take care of your own mess.