The glamorous view of palm trees and green grass outside of Long Beach City College does not reflect the real state of sanitation on campus.
Between dirty bathrooms that do not have paper towels stocked and elevators in bad shape that seemingly never get attended to, the inside of LBCC is shown far less care than the outside.
Many recent tests from respected science foundations point to upward facing hand dryers being very unsanitary and even potentially blowing bacteria into the user’s nose and mouth.
This is a problem because paper towels are not stocked in many bathrooms throughout LBCC, so student’s are forced to use the less sanitary hand dryers.
There are also frequent issues of toilet paper not being restocked and toilets clogged with toilet paper for days at a time.
Although bathrooms and places on the interior are suffering, the outside of LBCC looks as good as ever due to the college’s extensive lawn care and cleaning.
This lack of balance is a problem because it appears that the college is cleaning just enough to look good to the outside world, but not enough to keep their bathrooms clean for students.
With water waste being a significant problem in southern California, LBCC needs to use less resources to manage its lawns and instead relocate them to cleaning more services that students use often.
The college’s main goal should be to provide safe and quality services to their students who pay to be there, not to make their campus look as pretty as possible and leave important locations in need of help.
Issues of student health and services are ones that need addressing and if students go silent and don’t bring up these problems they will never be fixed.
Students need to make their voices heard and submit non-academic complaint forms about the state of the bathrooms and elevators so the college knows they need to be better sanitized.