Matthew Child

Gardner

2010/12b

6 May 2022

Trash Treats

Dear Brighton High Administration,

Over the course of the construction and pandemic students have started to increasingly

not care about how Brighton High School looks. Vandalism and trash have become a much

bigger issue than it ever was before. With Tiktok trends coming out that influence students to

make bad decisions, so they can rack up the views. Our school is getting destroyed. Megan

Jacobsen told me in our interview, that she feels “the reason students are posting this is “Higher

Risk=Higher Reward”. The means the higher risk it is, the more people will see it as an

accomplishment that you did that (Jacobsen, Megan) While walking around the school you just

see ketchup packets spilled on the floor and stolen mirrors. It’s unsettling and gross to look at.

It’s not inviting to newcomers. I did a survey and out of 29 people, 86.2% thought that students

destroying our school is ruining our school spirit. As students at Brighton we don’t want this.

We want to unite and have fun at Brighton. After all, WE ARE BHS! We need a solution to help

ameliorate our problem.

My proposal is, Trash Treats. Trash Treats would be a program that goes all year round

where students collect 10 pieces of trash, or report vandalism for a prize. When I was

interviewing Megan Jacobsen about the vandalism and trash problem here at Brighton she said
“No, the Administration is not doing enough. They need to get people to empty the trash cans

more often and an incentive for people to throw their trash away, especially in the parking lot.”

(Jacobsen, Megan) I do believe this to be true that garbage cans could be emptied out more. But,

I think it shouldn’t only be an Administration problem. We need to help pick up trash, even if it’s

not our own. Trash Treats would be an inexpensive way to lessen this problem. To start, we

would talk to the people at Bengal News to potentially create a funny ad, talking about how this

incentive would work. In my opinion, Bengal News has the resources to do this task effectively.

Once that ad is out and all the flex classes and people who aren’t in flex know that this is going

on, it’s time to move to the next step. The person who is running this program needs to use the

school's money to buy rewards. You could make this as small or as large as you would like. For

example, let's say we're going to give out candy for trash and gift cards for reporting vandalism.

Just looking at Amazon a bag of candy ranges from $12.49 to $35.99. I would say that this is

pretty fair for a bag of candy that will last at least half a year. The best part is it will reward

students who pick up trash. Now, a gift card for vandalism. I picked a gift card because it

requires more work than picking up trash. Vandalism needs to be reported, so that Brighton can

see who did it, since this has bigger consequences. You could load certain gift cards with as little

as $10, to as much as you feel comfortable with. Now that you’ve got the prizes it time to start.

Finally, teens are collecting their 10 pieces of trash and reporting vandalism to the school.

Our school is looking fresher by the day. I took a photo of trash by the construction and I don’t

ever want to see that again. The construction workers don’t deserve this. They should be able to

work without students being awful to them and their work. With Trash Treats, we could stop

this problem and focus on students' education.