▲ Garbage dumped by visitors is piled up in the dormitory smoking booth and restroom near Cheongunji

Located in front of CWNU's dormitory, Cheongunji, is a famous spot in CWNU that not only school members but also local citizens visit frequently. At the end of March, many citizens flocked to see the cherry blossoms on weekends and weekdays, causing problems such as indiscriminate dumping of garbage and lack of parking spaces.

The victims of the unauthorized dumping of garbage by visitors to Cheongunji were none other than CWNU students. Ji Dong- jun, a third- year student at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, who lives in CWNU's dormitory Building 2, just across from Cheongunji, said, "Outsiders who visited Cheongunji ate delivery food and drank coffee at Cheongunji, had dumped the garbage in the smoking room in front of Building 2 without permission. Therefore, the smoking room was full of beverage cups and bags of food." Meanwhile, on CWNU's Everytime, a controversy arose over whether the main culprit of the garbage accumulated in the dormitory smoking booth and the restroom behind the Cheongunji Cafe, was an outsider or a CWNU student. Song Min- a, a second- year student of Information & Communication Engineering who works at S9 Cafe in front of Cheongunji, said, "When I went outside to dispose of the trash accumulated in the cafe, I witnessed outside visitors dumping trash onto convenience store tables and in the lavatory inside the cafe building."

The problem with visitors was not only the dumping of trash. Song Min- a, a part- time worker at S9 Cafe in front of Cheongunji, mentioned the problem of bringing in the trash outside the store, saying, "Visitors carry the trash from outside and throw it in the beverage collection box of the café," and complained, "Recently, more smoking customers have thrown cigarette butts in takeout cups, which has made it difficult to deal with them." In addition, according to an anonymous informant, an outsider followed a student as he entered the dormitory and tried to force open the door because he could not leave, but the informant touched the access card to the dormitory card reader, when the outsider couldn’t go out of the dormitory, allowing him to leave. Moreover, parking and traffic congestion problems emerged as an issue, especially when family visitors visited Cheongunji with their own cars. Visitors parking in the parking lot in front of dormitories 1 and 2, or the cafe, which made it difficult for dormitory students with their own cars to secure parking spaces. Ji Dong- jun, a student in Building 2, also stated the traffic jams caused by visitors, saying, "As cars parked at lunchtime usually exit in the evening, so traffic jams seemed to appear as they coincided with the rush hour."

CWNU's student council 'Bud' held a cherry blossom festival from March 29 to 31 and set up food trucks and booths near Cheongunji. Food trucks were deployed, and the student council, concerned that the crowd of festival participants would cause the problem of dumping garbage, installed 15 garbage cans throughout Cheongunji. The student council said, "Considering the large amount of garbage generated during last year's Daedongje Festival, we tried to thoroughly prevent illegal dumping by providing 15 trash cans during the Cherry Blossom Festival." Park Se- yong, in charge of the Safety Management Team of CWNU's General Affairs Section, said as a response to the surge in the influx of citizens from outside Cheongunji, "Our university cleaners don't work on weekends. Therefore, if there is any inconvenience due to the garbage thrown away by weekend visitors, we plan to seek the cooperation of cleaners and carry out cleaning during springtime weekends as well." Then, he expressed his intention to improve the plan to install a separate recycling bin for Cheongunji, saying, "We will closely observe and analyze the site situation and share our opinions with environment cleaners."

In particular, since Cheongunji is close to the dormitories where CWNU students live, the influx of outside citizens can be a sensitive issue. In order to enjoy the beautiful scenery of Cheongunji by both local citizens and CWNU students, mutual consideration for the surrounding environment of Cheongunji is urgently needed.

By Jo Ah-bin, cub-reporter  opal_40@naver.com

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