Think back to life as a 10-year-old.

The only thing on our minds was when we’d next get to challenge our friends to a match in N64’s “Super Smash Bros.” or whether or not to ask that special someone in the seat two rows back to our middle school mixer.

Not on the top of our to-do lists were cleaning the table and making our beds.

And, yet, relentlessly our parents kept on us to pick up after ourselves, to the point, at times, of driving us to do and say some things we probably regret.

Philosophy classes are the venue for discussions on morality and whether our parents’ sense of it should or shouldn’t become our own, but in light of the times, a few things should be said for their persistence.

Times are tough, as if you hadn’t noticed, and University officials have been forced to make some difficult decisions.

Arguments can — and should — be made concerning their decisions and the reasons they were forced to make them, but we’re left wallowing in their consequences.

You see, Facilities Planning and Management, the department on campus responsible for planning the growth and maintaining the facilities we’ve got on campus, took blows like most this fall, and one of the many consequences can be seen in your friendly, neighborhood custodial staff walking the halls.

Or can’t be seen.

There are fewer of them around these days, and with the University’s resources stretched, it’s time to step up.

As in Monday’s Daily, the theme of the week seems to be a call for accountability.

Although we may have to get used to thinking of paper as a luxury in the classroom, we shouldn’t have to get used to sitting in each others’ trash.

So when you’re done reading the paper today, if, in fact, you are reading them in print, toss the paper — in a newspaper recycling bin, if one’s around. You wouldn’t imagine the number of complaints we hear from faculty and staff around campus about the number of Dailys lying around.

And when you’ve finished your latte or pop, toss it, because no one’s doing it for you anymore.

And because we’re not 10 anymore.

So quit acting like it.