Ever since the grounds department snuck this into the Campus announcements last week, CNU students all over have been vocal about their displeasure over being told what to do with the lawn: “Please refrain from using the Great Lawn for playing spikeball. If possible, please use fields at Greek, Warwick River, Gosnold Lawn, and on east campus between Taylor dorm and Facilities Management. To preserve the lawn areas, please move the set-up around each time you play. Thank you and for any questions please feel free to email the Grounds Department at: [email protected].”
For my whole time here, it’s been a common talking point among the student body that CNU spends way too much time and a disproportionate amount of their budget towards the beautification of the campus grounds. Unpopular among students is the near constant work on the many lawns throughout campus which produces plenty of noise at whatever time they choose to begin their work, sometimes early in the morning and often late into the afternoon – in the middle of classes or lunch. Their work kicks up dirt and grass onto students walking by and also forces any students off of a particular lawn being worked on in a seemingly endless battle to keep the grass short and green year-round. That effort to keep the grass green has given the grounds department an immense undertaking through the fall and winter season in what has been a time and resource intensive affair that I and many other students don’t really appreciate. In the spring and summer, I can appreciate a beautiful lawn – it only makes sense, at a time with so many people outside and enjoying the weather. But in the fall and winter seasons, one has to wonder why we need to keep this standard year-round, and fight nature itself to do so.
I don’t really care how immaculate the lawn is if that means we aren’t allowed to do what we want with the space. Whether that be spikeball, lounging, or simply walking across the lawn along “desire paths,” each student should have the right to engage freely with the space.
However, the grounds department is simply following the administration’s directions and maintaining a standard for the grounds, at the cost of that freedom. While it would be so easy to make demands that the administration lower its standards for the Great Lawn and allow us to use the space freely and cut costs, the actual process behind this would be difficult to implement. There is also the issue of who might be directly impacted by this choice. At this point, outside of the cost of the resources that go into the maintenance of the lawn, the cost of this work would come down to the wages of the many workers under the grounds department. Cutting costs related to the grounds department would effectively force their downsizing and lead to job losses.
I think the CNU administration needs to make available all of the facts surrounding our grounds department, including the actual costs of lawn care. I’d personally like to know the budget that we provide for the grounds department, how many the administration directly employs through this work and if that money is coming directly from our tuition or specific donations. Only then, when CNU students have all of the facts can we be engaged in a good faith discussion surrounding our priorities with the Great Lawn and other green spaces around CNU. But for now, we have inherited from the previous Trible administration a policy that was pursued without any consultation with the student body and as a result doesn’t reflect what I and other students actually value. Only this could explain the disconnect between the messaging from the grounds department and the student body. CNU can and should do better in this regard, and better understand what places like the Great Lawn mean for our campus, rather than solely focus on how these places look.
