By Darren Johnson
Campus News
I’m adjunct teaching at a couple of colleges this semester, and I visit many more campuses on behalf of my other newspaper, Campus News. One thing I notice is, overall, these institutions are so big, there’s no one really in charge of anything in particular, at least at the physical level.
Sure, the physical plant teams clean things and move things around, but if something is left in a place and it looks purposeful, it usually stays – often years, maybe decades.
Coming back to live instruction after the pandemic reminded me of what it must be like to visit Pompeii, Italy, where Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79 AD, and molten ash quickly covered everyone, freezing them in place for the next couple of millennia.
(The explosion was so bad, the city lost a letter “i” and is now just Pompei.)
Here are some photos from my iPhone of random relics I’ve seen on campus. They obviously survived the Explosion of Mount Covid.
To the left are a couple of telephone books next to a printer in a PC lab. Phone books? They must be at least a decade or more old. But why are they there? There’s no landline phone – and we’re in a computer lab. We could look up any number, if not on our smart phones.
Probably some professor, now retired, got these at one point, didn’t want them, and put them on the window sill for someone who perhaps would want them. This department does that. There also are several VHS tapes on window sills.
The Mac lab had a mouse trap in the corner. It was sprung. Whatever bait was in it was long gone. The mouse apparently ate and escaped. Kind of disgusting to think about, I carefully picked it up and tossed it in the garbage. Who knows how long that was there? There’s now a sign outside the door that says no food or drink is allowed in the lab.
Most mysterious is a fake potted plant with a plaster bunny holding a watering can with a heart on it on a ledge above the urinals in the men’s room in the Journalism department. It just makes no sense whatsoever. Who likes this? How did it get here?
Is the fake bunny watering the fake plant? Is that the story some past journalist in the department was trying to convey?
I don’t have the heart to toss these in the garbage, though.
Contact Darren Johnson at editor@journalandpress.com.
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