In the past semester Trinity’s campus has been plagued with cracked windows, shattered display cases and pathways littered with broken glass. From City Vista to Myrtle Hall to the Center for Science and Innovation (CSI), broken glass has been found both inside and outside facility buildings and residential living areas.

“Almost every time I walk by the upper campus dorms, usually Lightner and Thomas, I see some broken glass by the sidewalks and just some trash in general. It’s usually cleaned up pretty quick, but it’s always near that path by the little cliff at Thomas,” said first-year Despina Matzakos.

Upperclassmen dorms and apartments seem to have a tendency to spill over trash and glass materials from balconies. The mess hasn’t risen to any significant amount, but appears on a rather frequent schedule. While hanging out, students will sometimes accidentally drop their trash to the paths below them — some question if it is intentional.

“Fairly frequently, at the entrances to Lightner and Thomas dorms on both the first and third floor levels, you can see pieces of glass from broken bottles — alcoholic and otherwise — that could be assumed to have been thrown down from some of the upper level dorm rooms,” said Samuel Ellisor, junior Lightner resident. “Sometimes there is only one, sometimes the area is covered in bottle remnants. There is no positive culprit, since there are several floors of upper level dorms who could be to blame. Usually the glass is cleaned up within a day or two, but it happens a lot.”

There has been no confirmed blame on any student, though a similar situation seems to be happening in City Vista. There has been sightings on glass in the City Vista parking lot, sidewalks and even in the pool. There is speculation that this has also been caused by students partying or hanging out on the balconies, nonchalantly dropping their containers and bottles on the sites below.

“When I was visiting my brother in City Vista, there was just this little trail of broken glass in the parking lot below some rooms, but it wasn’t that bad until we went to the little hangout spot by the pool, and there was glass all in this bush,” said first-year Gabrielle Rodriguez. “It looked like it was all beer bottles, but there could’ve been like a vase or something else too.”

There has also been a number of broken windows in CSI and Myrtle Hall. CSI has twice now had one of its glass shelves in a display case shatter, though strangely with no damage to the glass walls containing the display. Recently, glass on the Cube garage door was also broken without any clear cause.

Leslie Bleamaster, adjunct professor of geosciences and manager of CSI, explained the mysterious circumstances.

“I can only speculate about how the glass on the Cube garage door broke — bird strike or weed wacker hit a rock that struck the glass. Either way, we found no evidence near the scene, no bird, no rock.  As for the broken glass shelf in the display cabinet, I have no idea,” Bleamaster said.

Soaring rocks are thought to be targeting Myrtle Hall as well. On the east side of the residence hall facing the street there is one particular window that has been cracked twice this year. Only the exterior appears to be damaged, so it is believed by Myrtle residents to have been struck from outside the hall, though who or what struck it remains unconfirmed.

Trinity is having a strange, shattering epidemic, with little certainty as to why these events are happening en masse. The university is taking steps to repair damaged areas, though certain pieces were custom ordered and will take a while to be replaced. Rest assured all damaged areas will eventually be made anew.