Walking into the Willard Building after the rush of morning classes can sometimes look like a hurricane somehow passed through the middle of Central Pennsylvania without structurally damaging any of the buildings. Newspapers clutter all over the hallways and classrooms, and there's a mass of extraneous debris by the newspaper bins.

Each day of class features an incomprehensible mess of Daily Collegians, and Thursdays feature a pile of glossy Sports Illustrated magazine inserts.

But there can be more than just newspapers, as Undergraduate Student Government (USG) President Galen Foulke saw.

"We cleaned up the Forum tonight, and that place was a mess," Foulke said, after helping the Office of the Physical Plant (OPP) clean up one day last week. "I picked up orange peels ... and tissues people blew their nose in and threw on the floor."

Probably no one will disagree that used tissues on the floor is kind of gross.

While the overall messiness of college students should suggest a certain immaturity, there's a bigger issue at hand with our inability to throw away trash -- it's been costing students money.

As a part of the "We Are" campaign, USG gave a presentation on Friday in front of the HUB-Robeson Center to show how much time and money is spent cleaning up newspapers and litter that students leave in classroom buildings.

What is the amount of money spent on cleaning up trash left behind by students? The OPP estimated around $282,995 per academic year. So think about that the next time you want to complain about tuition rates. We could be saving money by taking our trash 10 steps out of our way and throwing it in a receptacle when leaving classrooms.

If you pick up a newspaper, or enjoy a snack during class, it's not hard to throw either away. If it's a recyclable piece of trash, it's equally easy to place it in the correct recycling container.

Really, the USG should not have to address this type of issue. It's not that serious, but when boiled down it's messy and rude. College is a time for learning and growing up, and if students cannot handle something that we were supposed to learn in elementary school, it should have attention called to it.

So, yes, there are more serious issues on campus, but this problem deals with a lot of those -- if we're not mature enough to throw our trash away, how will we be able to the handle the real world?

Next time you grab a Daily Collegian on the way to class, remember to take it with you when you leave. It isn't that difficult to throw your trash away.