Over the past years, the campus has gotten significantly more crowded. And it shows. Both the interiors and exteriors of buildings aren’t as neat as they used to be. It’s no surprise, therefore, that a lot of litter was collected during the recent campus clean-up, as Cursor reported. 

The pollution on campus is partly due to the number of people that frequent it, but attitude and behavior also appear to play an important role in creating the problem. As the large amount of litter demonstrated, people don’t seem to consider it their task to keep TU/e neat. 

A poignant example of the decay that has set in is the Market Hall. More and more mornings, it looks like a dive bar after a Saturday night, with litter, dried-up puke and cigarette butts strewn everywhere. Need proof? Just look at the photo – taken last week – underneath this column. The benches are often occupied by regulars, who most probably don’t have any business being on campus. 

Back in the day, I would take oral exams in offices that were literally filled with smoke. And this in spite of the fact that already in 1980 the working group on smoking issues had issued a recommendation to make non-smoking the standard at TU/e. The smoking ban has gradually been introduced over the past 45 years. Until 2007, anyone sneaking a smoke could even be fined, but this penalty clause expired in 2020. 

Smoking is banned anywhere on the premises, even in parked cars. However, TU/e has made the conscious decision not to enforce the ban, because it’s actually cheaper to simply pay the fines for violating it. When asked, security says they don’t have any means of enforcement, but that’s also a decision of course.  

With the arrival of more students, more residents and more staff, the campus will only get busier in the future. If policies don’t change, neither will behavior. Pollution, I fear, will only increase from hereon out. I’m curious if we’ll manage to prevent further decay of the campus.