Students at Mills deal with a strange problem almost every day at lunch: aggressive seagulls swooping down to steal food. What should be a break to relax and eat can quickly turn into chaos when birds dive at students, poop or snatch food and trash off the ground. Because this happens so often, many students feel frustrated not being able to enjoy their lunch break in peace.There have been calls for a solution instead of just ignoring the problem. Mills staff and students should try and find a solution which allows them to fight back and defend themselves, hopefully preventing seagulls from continuing to make a mess all around campus or a solution that involves less risk.
Students have made many complaints of seagulls taking over campus, pooping everywhere and making a mess with the leftover trash. A solution proposed by several students was using slingshots to fight back against the seagulls. With that proposal, concerns arise about the safety of the students and birds. Now that slingshots can easily solve this problem, Jayden Carmona (12) had this to say when asked why he thinks seagulls are a problem for students at Mills: “They really invade the Mills space. They poop on people, eat people’s food, make them very uncomfortable and they make messes everywhere.” Carmona also said that using slingshots are very “practical” and that students could simply use rocks off the floor and shoot the birds.
Although using slingshots does raise a safety question for the birds and students, Carmona said, “I think all Mills students are certified slingshot users.” Another student, Shamal Kumar (12), said, “I think it’s a great idea and people should be able to, you know, defend themselves and scare seagulls away.” Students around Mills seem to approve and support the idea of using slingshots to scare seagulls away, but how will the staff members and admin react to the idea?
Tim Christian, the dean of students, had some rather different thoughts on the idea of using slingshots, really emphasizing his concern on the safety for Mills students. He did mention other alternatives, saying, “So what I’m hearing you say is seagulls are an issue and I do see that, but using slingshots as a projectile to hit birds is a really bad look so I’m going to frown on that.” And a safer alternative Dean Christian mentioned was “after the bell rings, you could get yourself out there and pick up all the trash before all the birds get a chance to scavenge on it.”
All in all slingshots may sound fun and easy to use, but there’s always gonna be safety concerns about throwing or shooting small projectiles into the sky at birds. Mills staff and admin will probably not approve but everyman for themselves slingshot away.
