By Anton Loeb, News Editor​

Due to complaints from UPA’s landlord, the Cathedral of Faith, about rising amounts of food and waste found on campus, the administration is now actively enforcing the rule that forbids students from eating in carpeted areas of the campus.

This is not a new rule; in fact, this rule was instated in 2007 when UPA and the Cathedral of Faith signed a lease agreement that outlined the circumstances under which the school could use the church’s facilities.

“The Cathedral of Faith, who is our landlord, has asked us to only have food on hard surfaces, like linoleum floors,” Director of Business Operations Dan Ordaz Jr. said.

The origin of this rule is that carpet is harder to clean than other surfaces, which can prove cumbersome for the cleaning staff, who are restricted by the short time that they have from when school ends to when the church takes over operations later in the evening.

“After five o’clock these facilities become Cathedral of Faith again,” Ordaz said. “What happens is that there are members of the church coming in to have a meeting and there are ground Cheetos in the carpet.”

Food remnants in the carpet also pose an issue of hygiene, as it often attracts unwanted pests.

“In some of our rooms, we have had issues with cockroaches and mice,” Ordaz said.

Despite this, Ordaz does not want to give students Saturday School as a punishment for this infraction, and instead sees the retraction of free dress days as a more viable option.

“If the campus continues to be dirty, we lose free dress,” Ordaz said.

Director of Technology Tom Guevara voices his concern that continued disregard for rules having to do with the cleanliness of the campus might have a negative effect on the longevity of the relationship that UPA has with the Cathedral of Faith and might lead to further changes to the lease agreement, making it more expensive to offset the cost of more comprehensive cleaning efforts.
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“If this grows to be an even bigger issue, we might have to renegotiate our lease, and we don’t want to do that,” Guevara said.