Lost and found searching for identity

By the time John Glad realized his phone was missing, he’d been all over campus.

“I checked four different buildings before I found it,” Glad said.

That’s what Utah State University students often have to do to find lost things — because the school has no central lost and found system. There are, in fact, 27 lost-and-found centers on campus.

As winter approaches, even more students will be going from one building to the next in search of missing hats, gloves, scarves and other articles of clothing and property.

Some students have suggested combining the lost-and-found centers to ease the process of finding lost items. Some staff members, however, said doing so would result in unnecessary work.

Lori Hyde, a staff assistant who helps with the Ray B. West building’s lost-and-found, said consolidating the system would be “just one more thing” for the faculty to worry about.

“We’d need to hire a whole new staff to handle that,” Hyde said.

If USU faculty ever decided to create a centralized lost-and-found system, they may need to hire a special staff, according to Brigham Young University lost-and-found employee James MacDonald.

BYU has a staff specifically for the school’s centralized lost-and-found system. According to MacDonald, three to four students staff the lost-and-found during the summer, but as many as 10 students can be employed during the busy winter months. MacDonald said having a staff for a centralized lost-and-found system is crucial.

“If there was no one to take care of it, it would be impossible to find anything because so much comes in,” MacDonald said. “We sort and catalog everything so students can find it quickly.”

Without a lost-and-found staff at USU, the large number of lost-and-found items from all over campus could make a centralized system difficult to navigate.

“It would be easier for students, but just as much of a pain,” Glad said. “There would be so much stuff to look through.”

USU is one of the few universities in Utah that does not have a centralized lost-and-found system. Weber State University, Southern Utah University and Utah Valley University all report to have some variation of a central lost-and-found. The University of Utah is one other school that reports having lost-and-found centers run by each individual building.