Throughout the years, Downey High School has been known to have a clean campus. Though it may be true compared to other schools, not everyone agrees with that statement. 

Visiting Downey High School for the first time ever, 3rd grader, Valery Garcia says the campus is almost as clean as her school, Lewis Elementary. Though she believes the campus is clean, Downey High students have a different opinion. 

Eco-club member and senior, Ian Beracales explained, “There is still trash everywhere, even though it is one of the cleaner campuses,” Beracales said. “I’m sure there is that mentality of, ‘I’ll toss one thing, it is not going to matter.’ but if half the people toss one thing, it adds up.”

After discussing about the cleanliness of our school, and reasons why it is dirty, Ava Barajas, 12,  claims it is because of a simple mistake the whole school makes, littering.

“Littering is a pretty big issue at our school… and I think we need to do a better job of just picking up our trash,” Barajas uttered. “It could be a LOT worse, but it can also be much better.” 

In order to fix the problem of having a dirty campus, Matthew Mendoza, 12, decided to help clean up.

Mendoza states, “I try to pick up my trash or my friends’ trash whenever I can so the school isn’t as dirty,” he went on. “I hate when people litter purposefully… like it is not that hard to pick up after yourself.”

By helping pick up trash around the school, students like Ian Beracales, Ava Barajas, and Matthew Mendoza change the views of our school and allow for us to go on with our high school lives without having to avoid the stand-alone waste around us.  

Being said, overall our school is said to be “clean enough,” but not truly clean. What these few are saying is that we need to work on cleaning up after ourselves and being consistent with it.