Nobody likes picking up garbage. But it’s not a far cry to assume that a Whitman student, who attends a college that considers itself to be fairly environmentally friendly, would go out of his or her way to pick up a piece of trash. To test the soundness of this assumption I undertook the mission of surreptitiously planting pieces of garbage around campus and observing the number of people who walked by without picking them up.

The results were mildly disappointing.

I started the experiment in front of Lyman House on Wednesday afternoon. At 4:25 p.m., I placed two pieces of garbage in the middle of the walkway leading to Lyman’s main entrance: an apple core wrapped in a napkin alongside a small cardboard box. Over the next hour and a half 26 people walked by, hardly seeming to even notice the garbage, until first-year Osta Davis picked up both pieces. When told that 26 people had passed by before her, Davis wasn’t surprised. “If they hadn’t picked up garbage and there was a garbage can nearby I would’ve been surprised,” she said.

I observed more encouraging results when I repeated the experiment, this time at 1:20 p.m. on Friday with a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper, a crushed can of Amp and a crushed can of Coca-Cola, each planted in various spots around the paths to the library. The first person to pick up a piece of garbage was Ben Skotheim, a first-year who proceeded to carry the crushed can of Amp towards the nearest recycling bin. When asked if he considered himself to be any more environmentally conscious than his peers, he replied, “I hope not.”

Logan Skirm, a junior music major, picked up the crushed Coca-Cola can after 17 people had passed it by, one of whom actually kicked it a couple feet down the path, another having run over it with his bike. Skirm’s friend, with whom he was walking, described him as “a good Samaritan,” which she yelled over her shoulder as he, mortified, tried to run away.

Alyssa Roberg, a first-year who picked up the Diet Dr. Pepper with an impassioned cry of disgust, said, “It kind of makes me angry.” She’d expected more people to pick up the garbage, “especially something that can be so easily recycled.” When asked why she thought so many people passed it without picking it up, she said, “People are lazy.”

By 2:20 p.m. all three pieces of garbage had been picked up, after a combined total of 43 people had walked by and ignored them.

In an ideal world the first person who saw the garbage would have been the first person to pick it up, but I figure it could’ve been worse. After all, Whitman’s campus is mostly litter-free. I’d like to think this is because although so many people failed to pick up other people’s garbage, they’re willing to pick up their own.