Our school campus is not our bedroom. It’s a simple truth, but a worthwhile reminder.

All too often, Urban students walk into class to find a mess of food packaging, crumbs, uncapped pens and paper scraps. The sights and smells are particularly unpleasant following large club meetings and popular forums held in classrooms.

Common areas including the Student Center, the Old Library and the new Alumni Blues Lounge also frequently fall victim to this unfortunate reality. After lunch, plates of food and empty bottles are left behind on tabletops in spaces where Urban students tend to congregate.

This is an unfitting reality, particularly for a prestigious private high school in San Francisco — a city that prides itself on its environmental consciousness. According to the mission statement of the Urban Green Team, the group “aims to analyze and change Urban’s institutional practices to be more environmentally sustainable,” focusing on issues including energy consumption, water usage, and waste disposal. Simultaneously, Urban’s food service Flik works to control waste by using compostable food packaging. With such initiatives in place to reduce our environmental impact, the rest of the Urban community must follow suit and treat our shared environment with respect.

One of Urban’s seven core values reads, “Learning extends beyond the classroom to instill in students a sense of mission and purpose as citizens of the larger community and world.” It is our responsibility as students to learn how to care for our school environment so that we may apply this practice beyond the walls of Urban. We, The Urban Legend staff, ask that the students of the Urban School embrace this duty. As we walk the halls of Urban, we must take the initiative and responsibility to clean up after ourselves.