The administration gives many signals of desiring a clean and attractive campus.

And yet we allow stake signs. There is a time limit to how long stake signs can remain standing, but this is rarely enforced.

The grounds crew collected 120 stake signs last week. That’s after collecting over 100 the week before.

Seven groups had at least 10 stake signs out in one week. Those were Student Senate, Mustang Marathon, the Leadership Consultant Council, 3140 Café, the Medieval Club, the Young Conservatives of Texas and the Women’s Center.

This is a diverse group of organizations, and they are all encouraging students to attend an event of some sort.

This is fine, Ed Board, of course has no interest in interfering with free speech. However there is something to be said for campus appearance.

At the most, five signs are all that is needed to let 99 percent of the campus know about an event. Those would be near the Hughes- Trigg west bridge and front steps, the base of the Dallas Hall steps, in front of Meadows, a board inside of Cox, and one at the Law school.

Students walking through the main quad see the same messages at both ends, and sometimes near the fountain. The main quad is one of SMU’s biggest assets. The SMU home page prominently displays the quad on a sunny day.

This image does have two stake signs in it at the moment, but these are just enough to portray the campus as “involved”.

When there are ten to twenty signs, in brilliant neon shades, and assorted states of dilapidation, the image is rather different. Candidates for Student Senate have even more restrictive deadlines for sign removal than other organizations. Their signs are supposed to be removed by midnight on the day elections end.

In spite of these stricter deadlines, senate candidates had signs standing at 5 p.m. the next day.

The SMU grounds crew probably picked up several, contributing to the hundred or so we’ll see next week.

Ed Board knows that we have a rather apathetic campus, but are extra stake signs likely to get the attention of our students?

Perhaps that was what the administration was thinking when it allowed organizations to post a maximum of 25 signs per event. These signs were often built at the expense of Student Senate.

Until this semester, the grounds crew threw away these signs, many of which cost more than a dollar each to make. Now they are collected for reuse thanks to the senate environment committee.

Now that’s thinking.