Students aren’t supposed to chew gum in school, but all a person has to do is take a peek under a school desk here and there to see that rule has been broken since time immemorial.

Gum also gets discarded on concrete, where it can create a sticky mess.

Along with other litter and trash, it can be a tough job to keep a campus clean.

It was enough to inspire one group of students at Camp Verde Middle School to band together and help to make their fellow students respect their campus.

Christened the Adopt-A-Campus program, the student council picks one class a week to spend some time in the mornings and afternoons to scrape gum from concrete, pick up trash, pull weeds and generally make the campus look as neat as possible.

The hope is by having the students personally involved with cleaning the grounds, they will be more conscious of their actions to keep the campus clean throughout the school day.

It’s been four weeks, and Adopt-A-Campus Committee Vice President Kayla Sandoval said the effects have been noticeable.

“You can really see that it looks a lot better out here,” Sandoval said. Last Wednesday, Sept. 27, it was a seventh-grade classes responsibility to make the rounds.

Sandoval said the committee decided to enlist the seventh-graders first, so they could eventually teach the sixth-graders how to keep the campus looking sharp.

And the eighth-graders?

“Well, we decided we’d go last,” Sandoval said. “Because we’ve been here the longest.”

Fernando Diaz, the self-described “guy who makes sure everything gets put together” on the committee, said the school provides the equipment.

“We’re going to do this every week until the end of the school year,” Diaz said.

The program is something the committee hopes will continue well into the future, long after the current class of eighth-graders graduates and moves on, committee member Lexy Burris said.

“We do hope so,” Burris said. “It’s never been done before, and we just need to try and get it going.”

The cleanups are conducted during special periods at the beginning and end of the day, so the students don’t miss out on any core instructional time in the classroom, Diaz said.

Committee chairwoman Mariah Daniels said she was impressed with how Adopt-A-Campus had been working out.

“Adopt-A-Campus has helped the students build a respect for our school,” Daniels said. “We are hoping to teach the students of Camp Verde Middle School to be better citizens in the community. I know it has helped me learn how to be a better leader and take better care of our campus.”