Graffiti in Fisher-Hassenfeld last year (DP)

Blame the squirrels for those all cellophane wrappers on College Green, but take the rap when soda cans and empty take-out boxes start to crop up in hall lounges.

And when the contents of late night take-out spill into the hallway and begin to fester over the weekend, clean it up. Chalk it up to vandalism, sloth, drunken rampages, whatever. Just get rid of it. Pronto.

Trashing the halls seems to be a venerated Penn tradition as old as throwing toast or pelting juniors with ketchup on Hey Day — just larger manifestations of a schoolwide passion for putting food anywhere but in your mouth. However, littering too often crosses the line.

For several days, unidentified food (which I suspect are souring barbeque chicken wings) has been strewn across the halls in Ware. The sticky mess is splattered over several yards of floor tile, forcing me to skip comically over the mess on tiptoe. A big black trash bag has been artistically pinned to the walls. The spread’s on s tile, not carpet.

And it’s coming to a hallway near you. Over Halloween, an elevator in the high rises was vandalized out of commission. Last year, people stole furniture and potted plants from King’s Court. Sometimes, the vandalism turns malicious. Last January, anti-Semitic and homophobic graffiti appeared in corridors of Fisher-Hassenfeld.

And then, there’s senseless, run-of-the-mill destruction. Those people who don’t flush the toilets, pour coffee grinds down the sink, or vomit in the elevators. Insomia cookie boxes left on window ledges, under-the-door frat party leaflets, overflowing trash bins — courtesy of the un-housetrained few who treat public trashcans as personal garbage disposals.

Since the residential maintenance staff usually have the weekends off, they can’t come to the rescue until it’s too late. Come Monday morning, the festering remnants of our weekend debauchery rise to greet those much-enduring souls.

Vandalizers, repent now. Clean up your own messes. Release your destructive tendencies elsewhere. Turn Spring Fling into Spring Clean.

Or, if you must vandalize, do it through more creative channels. I like the poems written in chalk in Van Pelt stairwells. Or how, the other day, I spotted a Dr. Pepper can in the hands of a College Hall statue of former provost William Pepper. Try to navigate the tenuous line between art and crime. Flash mob on College Green, anyone?

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