The school yard is overflowing with trash and garbage. This has certainly had a detrimental effect upon the school board's view of our poor school. I have in this letter some ideas that I hope willhelp reverse the current state of affairs.

First of all, let us examine the problem and its roots. Frankly, most students couldn't care less about what our school looks like. They feel that it is too much of a walk to the garbage cans to throw away their trash, so they just drop it wherever they happen to be. If they should be warned about littering, they will usually just ignore the warning.

The first idea that comes to mind to anyone is punishing the litterers. If this doesn't work, then more and more severe penalties should be put into effect. However, this tends to backfire. Normally, when a student gets punished, he or she doesn't think about the reason for the punishment and decide not to do it again. On the contrary, the student will usually blame the punisher solely for his or her problem. Sometimes this goes even further. The student decides to get back at the punisher and continues with what he or she was doing, only more vigorously.

My first idea, then, is not to punish the students more, but, instead, to reward them. By this, I mean that, if the campus is reasonably clean at the end of the week, to give the entire population of the school a reward. This reward should be something that most of the students desire; say, an open campus at lunch the following Monday. This should get the students of the school to immediately connect a clean cam-

pus with a reward. The majority of the students will not litter. The few that, for one reason or another, do not want to stop, will probably either be forced to stop by other students who really want the reward.

Another idea is to put more garbage cans on the school grounds. This should stop the llitter from the students who feel that it takes too long to find a trash can. All they would have to do is to walk a few yards and back.

I certainly hope that these ideas will help you in your problems with litter. I feel that the first idea would be particularly effective in this respect.