Juan Villa / The Collegian
There is a drawer in the Fresno State bowling alley for abandoned items. Sunglasses. Cell phones. A mess of laptop power cords. A small metal square shaped like a tiki head.
The bowling alley is one of many popular places on campus where students hang out. Sometimes their stuff continues to hang out long after the students themselves are gone.
“We get people from the bowling team who leave their bowling balls and we have to collect them,â€Â said Noah Coble, who’s worked at the bowling alley for six months.
However, not everyone is a bowler looking for their ball. For many students, it can be difficult to locate where they lost their sunglasses after a typical day on campus. Fortunately, the University Police Department has created a streamlined lost and found system for Fresno State.
The police department is in charge of the lost and found for the entire campus. Items found on campus are brought to the police department, catalogued and placed in a locked room.
Different areas of campus have different policies for sending found items to the police department. The bowling alley has someone from the Police Service Center in the University Student Union Pavilion pick up larger items, such as backpacks once a day.
The student union lounge sends found items to the police department once a week.
“It’s better because then everyone has a general idea of where to contact instead of many different places,â€Â said Melissa Martinez, who works in the lounge information center.
Reports of lost items are also recorded in the system and matched against items that are turned in. Amy Armstrong, public information officer for the University Police Department, said that it̢۪s important to report lost items because a lot of items go unclaimed in the lost and found.
“That’s probably the biggest problem with the program,â€Â Armstrong said. “People aren’t reporting their lost items. We have a lot of found items.â€Â
Reports of both lost and found items can be filed at the University Police Department office or the Police Service Center. To make the process even easier, the University Police Department Web site also has an online form for reporting lost and found items.
Unclaimed items that have been at the police department lost and found for six months or more are given to the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) department on campus.
For 17 years, SSD has held a yearly sale of lost and found items in the spring. They also auction off bicycles that are abandoned on campus.
Items that have been sold in the past include everything from cameras and jewelry, to book bags and baby clothes. Proceeds go toward purchasing various equipment for SSD̢۪s Adaptive Computer Lab.
Carole Snee of SSD said that a sale was not held this past spring because of a lack of bicycles, which make up the majority of the profits.
She hopes a sale will happen ne spring, though.
“We are very appreciative of the relationship over time that we’ve had with the police department,â€Â Snee said.