With a student body of 31,527 comes a steady accumulation of wear and tear on campus, from spills to litter to graffiti. Building Services’ 245 custodial staffers are responsible for cleaning 6 million square feet of classrooms, offices, and restrooms outside the sports and                     residential areas.
The workload required to maintain clean and safe conditions varies widely throughout the academic year. 
“Fall is one of the                                     busiest times for us just                                                                     because of the amount of students we have on campus and all the activities we have going on,” said  Building Services assistant                                                 director Stacy Whitfield. 
Demand for custodial work is highest near final exam week, surpassing even the first days of the semester as classes begin, Whitfield said.
Crowds gather far above       typical levels in Middleton Library, which offers expanded seating and additional open floors to help meet the                                       requirement for additional study areas during finals week. 
How often buildings require cleaning varies according to usage and public access hours. Middleton requires the most attention among the academic areas cleaned by Building                Services due to constant student presence when open 24 hours a day, and single-use structures like Dodson Auditorium require minimal upkeep, Whitfield said. 
The pens, pencils and paper scraps left behind constitute much of the trash cleaned from floors in student areas, while paperclips and staples dominate  in offices and faculty areas, she said.
Despite the workload, the custodial staff stays on top of cleaning campus, said animal science sophomore Haley Rupp.
“I’d say for the restrooms and all the classroom buildings                 [the custodial staff] do very well,” Rupp said. 
The most costly and challenging damage to repair is graffiti, particularly etchings and other more destructive forms that cannot be scrubbed away and necessitate replacement of the entire surface.
“If it’s scratched into            stainless steel, there’s no                    cleaning that,” Whitfield said. “If it’s on a wall… then the whole wall may have to be repainted.” 
However, Whitfield  said most of the graffiti they                                          encounter appears to be from non-LSU student sources, such as the messages cheering on    athletic teams of other                                   universities found after football games. 
“‘Another university was here,’ ‘another organization was here,’ ‘beat LSU’ … for the most part, it’s somebody coming onto the campus that wants to express themselves,” Whitfield said. “I really feel like the campus as a whole… everybody’s kind of playing the same role of ‘this is our campus, let’s keep it clean.’”
Rupp said as a student she has encountered little graffiti beyond occasional writing on bathroom stalls. 
In the residential areas of campus, 151 supervisors and custodial staff are responsible for upkeep. Unlike most other facilities on campus,                                student housing is continuously                             occupied, said Housing                                                   Operations associate director Celena Trahan. Areas such as showers and kitchens require frequent detailed cleaning and disinfection. 
Skateboards and roller skates are among the most                          common sources of trouble, causing  damage to the floor finish that can’t be buffed away said        Trahan. 
“We often have to strip the finish off of the floor and                      reapply multiple coats of floor finish to restore the original shine.”       Trahan said. 
Cooperation between students and custodial staff is          important in keeping the campus clean, Whitfield said. 
“If you see something, say something,” he said. “Unless somebody reports that                 [problem], it may be a while before we know.”