KRISTIN ELVES/Arizona Daily Wildcat Custodial services employee Dale Sheridan empties waste receptacles on the third floor of the Art building yesterday evening. Due to budget cuts (percentage) janitorial staff will be forced to cut back hours.

Janitors will clean classrooms less frequently, so facilities management asks students to tidy up after selves

UA students are going to have to start picking up after themselves.

Recent budget cuts have forced a cutback on the number of days per week janitors will be cleaning classrooms and off-campus offices.

Joel Valdez, senior vice president for business affairs, wrote in a memo to deans, directors and department heads last week that because of a more than $6 million, or 17 percent, reduction in Facilities Management's budget since July, custodial services would be cut back.

State legislators cut $18 million more from the UA budget last week.

Beginning Monday, classrooms will be cleaned three days per week instead of five.

But this announcement doesn't automatically translate into more layoffs. Custodial employees will still work 40 hours per week, however, they will now be working four 10-hour days per week rather than five 8-hour days.

On Jan. 6, UA property located off-campus, or about 150 buildings, that had been cleaned at least once a week will be cleaned bi-monthly, said Chris Kopach, associate director of Facilities Management, which oversees custodial and operations services.

The department has been hit with cuts before.

Forty-nine percent of full-time custodial services jobs have been cut in the past two years.

Now, Facilities Management will be more dependent on students and faculty to keep the classrooms clean.

Because buildings will be cleaned less often, "Facilities Management will need the cooperation of all students and professors by following the Īno food, no drink' policy in all classrooms," Valdez stated.

Facilities Management recently took photographs of classrooms to see if the policy was being followed.

But despite the no food or drink signs, food and beverage consumption was an apparent problem, Kopach said.

"If you · leave the Wildcat in the classroom, even your newspaper is part of the problem. You can help," Kopach said. "Just pick up after yourself; that would be very helpful."

Students keeping classrooms clean will enable janitors to "spend more time monitoring the cleanliness of other areas in the buildings."

One student said that relying on students to keep the classroom clean doesn't work.

"I don't think anyone's ever going to follow (the policy)" said Melissa Phillip, a criminal justice junior.

She found water bottles and food wrappers in her classroom yesterday.

In some classrooms, the no food and drink policy is posted twice on the same door.