Pickups cover U. in shaving cream

Shaving cream dangled from trees and covered doors, vomit pooled in dorm hallways and stairwells were rank.

More than just the average post-party mess, the refuse left by eating club pickups and Bicker week partying can create an extra burden for the University's janitorial staff.

"It's part of our job," Josue Lajeunesse, lead Building Services janitor, said Friday morning while hosing off shaving cream smeared on glass doors at Spelman Halls. "Typically, there are a lot more messes," said Jon Baer, Building Services director.

Though he knew of nothing especially abnormal happening last week, cleaning what the student masses leave in their wake is sometimes "an absolute shame for the staff," Baer said. It also diverts staff from their other duties, depriving students of certain services, he said.

Will Scharf '08, Charter Club Interclub Council (ICC) president, said in an email that the clubs "have worked very closely with the University and with Public Safety in particular over the past few years to try to keep pickups as safe as possible."

Scharf cited ICC and club efforts to prevent club members from carrying open containers of alcohol during pickups and to hold the events earlier in the evening to reduce student pre-gaming. The clubs have also worked "directly with Public Safety to allow them to post adequate foot patrols along our pickups routes," Scharf said.

Two Public Safety officers followed the pack of camouflage-clad Cap & Gown members that paraded, chanting, across campus Thursday night to pick up newly accepted members.

"I heard them banging and coming through," said Agatha Offorjebe '09, who was picked up. "They came and sprayed the shaving cream ... in my hair and all over me."

Club members also sprayed "Cap" on her Spelman entryway door and marched with new recruits back to the club, "screaming, yelling and chanting 'Cap & Gown,' " Offorjebe said.

The scene was "exciting," she said, but "pretty tame."

Students reported seeing shaving cream sprayed around the 1903 Hall courtyard, on the walls in Dod Hall and elsewhere around campus Friday morning. Shaving cream cans and empty bottles of champagne also littered the ground in some areas.

"I noticed the campus was pretty lathered up," Rick Clugston, manager of dormitories at Building Services said.

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But Clugston had not realized that Bicker was going on last week.

"It's not totally out of the ordinary that we come in in the morning and find that kind of thing anyway," he said, calling it "typical" for staff to find vomit in stairwells or showers. Student revelry surrounding home football games sometimes leaves particularly large messes, he said.

Baer cited the February 2005 vandalism of Forbes College during pickups, when a window was broken and trash was strewn across the halls, as an example of student behavior going beyond minor pranks.

"There was some damage done," he said.

Bicker week events don't always reach that level, though, and students sometimes take responsibility for the disarray they leave behind.

On Thursday night, eating club members came back to a Whitman College hallway to clean up the mess they made 10 minutes earlier, Whitman RCA Manav Lalwani '09 said.

Lajeunesse emphasized his good relations with students, saying those in his hall are receptive when he encourages them to contribute to its cleanliness. He expressed no resentment toward students who party.

If they just "study, study, study," he said, students will "collapse." Partying is understandable for students because after college "there's no more fun for you," he said.

Clugston agreed that students are generally respectful of University staff. But when partying does leave its mark on campus, he said, "our folks have to pay the price."