Like it or not, look around any Penn State classroom and you're pretty much guaranteed to find them. I'm not talking about Uggs, iPods or Sudoku puzzles. I'm talking about coffee cups, newspaper piles, wads of gum, candy bar wrappers, soda bottles and half-eaten bagels.

Although university officials recently announced that Penn State's food and drink ban in classrooms has proven effective over the last semester, the piles of garbage that remain under chairs in 108 Forum attest to the fact that little has changed.

I do understand why Penn State wanted to institute this policy. I have understood it from the moment I pulled out my book bag from beneath my seat in biology class one day, only to find that it had been soaking in a pool of spilled coffee for the past hour.

I also understand that while the job of our janitorial staff may be to keep classrooms clean, it certainly is not to go around collecting the litter of ultra-lazy students who refuse to walk five feet to throw their own trash away. This small minority of students have ruined it for us all -- almost.

They would have ruined it if anyone at all was listening to or enforcing this policy, aside from a few posters scattered on classroom doors that depict a talking trash can reminding us: "No food or beverages allowed!" Although the trash can is pretty intimidating, I must admit it has never stopped anyone from trekking right on by, breakfast bar in hand.

Instructors and professors who are presumably supposed to be enforcing this policy are not only ignoring it, but they are also violating it themselves. And who can blame them? With a whole host of classroom issues to deal with -- people talking, cell phones ringing and iPods blaring -- hunting down students who quietly sip on their sodas should be the least of an instructor's concerns. Good luck even picking out the 10 people who are eating in a classroom of 300 people.

Back when the food ban was first instituted in September, faculty letters to the editor poured in to the Collegian opposing the policy. People were mad. Gradually, people stopped talking about it because they realized that they could ignore the ban rather than waste their time fighting it.

The fact of the matter is that the majority of us are still bringing snacks and drinks to class -- and cleaning up after ourselves -- like we have been all along. Actually, many students need to snack on food or drink their morning cup of coffee to get through the day and shouldn't be punished for the behavior of a few slobs. For those of us who have four, five or six hours of class at a time, wrapping our minds around a calculus problem or acing an exam while our stomachs turn is just not going to happen.

Students with common sense and the slightest bit of manners never needed a food ban to prevent us from leaving classrooms in a state of total disaster. For us, this food ban is taking a huge step away from the "student-centered" image the administration talks so much about.

The students who caused the ban by leaving their trash everywhere don't care if they signed a pledge to not bring food into classrooms. They probably just did it for the free bottle of water given to those who signed an agreement to the policy. They won't respect a talking trash can when they have already failed to respect fellow students, professors, janitors and their own school.

In the end, no one will listen until this joke of a policy is enforced.

In the meantime, I'm sure you'll continue drinking your morning cup of coffee or eating your snack, just like me.

Don't worry -- your professor won't stop you. They're downing their own latte.